Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are aware of and concerned by Armenian reports of the destruction and desecration of certain monuments and artefacts in Azerbaijan. We are also aware of and concerned by reports of the destruction of Azerbaijani cultural artefacts in territories under Armenian control.
	We deplore such actions, no matter where or by whom they are committed. But the primary concern at this stage should be not the apportionment of blame but effective action to ensure the preservation of cultural and historical monuments on both sides of the current dispute. We consider this an issue for UNESCO to resolve and we are supporting its efforts to find a solution. We look to the Governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan, with the active engagement of UNESCO, to comply with their international commitments with regard to the safeguarding of cultural heritage.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, there seems little doubt that Azeri troops have inflicted deliberate—and apparently officially sanctioned—cultural damage on these grave sites, concreting them over and deliberately setting out to destroy them. Not only is that bad in every cultural sense, but it obviously does not help to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
	Might we not go a little further than looking to the Azeris to halt their actions or hoping that UNESCO will do something? Could we not use very much stronger words to the Azeri Government and say that this is not helping the peace we all want to see in that part of the word and that it is putting an ugly stain on the reputation of Azerbaijan?

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend about the state of the memorial in Baku to the British and Commonwealth soldiers of Dunster Force, who died towards the end of the First World War while attempting to cut off the supply of oil to the central powers? Is she aware that the memorial was due to be opening by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent in September 2003, but the ceremony was abandoned at the last moment and the site is now terribly neglected and vandalised? I declare an interest as chairman of the All-Party Group on War Graves and Battlefield Heritage.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, in the coming academic year the Learning and Skills Council, which manages this programme on behalf of my department, will invest nearly £15 million in the dance and drama awards scheme. Thereafter, levels of investment in the scheme will be subject to the outcome of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review.

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I agree that it is important to open up opportunities for under-represented groups. I hope that the noble Baroness will be encouraged by the fact that the Learning and Skills Council funds a number of initiatives aimed at widening participation in these awards—for instance, it grant-funds participating schools to provide training and opportunities for under-represented groups and it funds training for students with disabilities.

Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, although my noble friend Lord Renton is undoubtedly right in what he said about the noble Baroness the Lord Speaker, does the Minister recall, as the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, just indicated, that some of us went to some trouble to ensure in the arrangements made that the Lord Speaker was not drawn into exchanges in the House, both to retain the self-regulation which all Lordships prize very much and to avoid the opportunities for misplaced ingenuity which arise in another place in asking questions of Mr Speaker?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I, too, have received those dreadful e-mails. I must agree with a statement made by Jan Egeland this morning in which he said that it was absolutely appalling that one-third of the people who have been killed or wounded are children and that neither Hezbollah nor Israel seem to have proper regard for civilian life. The Government absolutely agree with that and, as I said, we are working with all those agencies to try to ensure an end to all the violence, including violence against women and children.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, does the Minister agree that Israel has every right to seek to take out the odious Hezbollah? It has had 1,700 rockets rained on its cities—Tiberias, upper Galilee and Haifa—in the past few days. It is utterly reasonable that it should seek to attack and destroy the people who launched this unprovoked attack on it. But does she also agree that the response of seeking to destroy not merely the Hezbollah hideouts but the entire Lebanese state and the Lebanese Government—that is happening now; food, petrol and other basic resources are all being destroyed and people are being reduced to desperation and terror—is not the right course and will not benefit Israel in either the short term or the long term? Can that view be made more clearly than it has been so far? We read in the papers that President Bush, apparently backed by the British Prime Minister, has given the green light to the Israelis to carry on bombing. Can the Minister deny that and say that we are not associated with that view because it is the not right way to peace, it will not help Israel and it will not save Lebanon from utter destruction?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I certainly agree that Israel has a right to protect itself. That means taking out Hezbollah, which is exactly what it is doing. But, of course, its response in Lebanon must be proportionate. We, together with the G8 and all the international organisations, are constantly urging that on Israel. We hope that the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will go into the region soon and will be able to broker some sort of peace in that region so that we can get back to the road map and all the other things that are necessary. It is important to note that we are working constantly to get results. It does not matter who is leading, who is following or whatever. We just have to get results, and we are doing what we believe to be right in all circumstances.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, with great respect to the Minister for her obvious sincerity, can she reply to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford? Do the British Government support what evidently is the American view that there should be no immediate ceasefire to enable Israel to carry on not only with the destruction of Hezbollah, which we understand, but with the devastating consequences for Lebanon that will plunge the whole region into despair and chaos?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, may I associate myself strongly with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about bringing pressure to bear on this? However, no one has mentioned the role of Syria. Undoubtedly, Lebanon at the moment is being torn between the natural determination of Israel to defend itself and the equal determination of Syria to keep a foothold in Lebanon at all costs. What can my noble friend can say about pressure being brought to bear on Syria to withdraw completely from Lebanon and to stop its backing for Hezbollah?

Baroness Williams of Crosby: I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 148A, 148B, 154A, 154B, and refer to some of the other amendments in this group. One of the purposes of the Bill is to set up admission forums within each LEA area, which would report on admissions to the schools in their area, and in particular would bring together head teachers and others involved in admissions to look at the pattern of admissions over a whole authority area. The purposes of the amendments tabled by my noble friendsLady Sharp and Lady Walmsley and me are: first, to indicate that all admission fora should make reports—not that they "may" make them—as there should be an obligation to do so; secondly, under Amendment No. 148A, to ensure that the admission fora pattern extends to academies, CTCs and other schools outwith the definition of a maintained school; and, thirdly, to indicate that the whole group of schools should contribute to reports made by the admission forum and that the forum has the right to ask them to do so to ensure that all schools in a local authority area are covered.
	Let me explain why we believe this to be so important, and in particular why the inclusion of all schools in an authority area is essential to ensuring that admission fora operate in a proper way. I shall start with two groups of children for whom the admission fora will play an extremely important part in ensuring fairness of admissions across the range of schools available to parents. At present, some 760,000 children in primary schools are believed to have special educational needs, and of that large groupof children—I repeat, around 760,000 in primary schools alone—only about 67,000 have formal statements. In addition there are around 775,000 disabled children, those with intellectual or physical disabilities, who form part of the group of children awaiting admission to a suitable school. It is essential that the entry of these children into schools follows both their needs and the wishes of their parents—all the more so since the Government are insistent about widening the range of parental choice to a whole group of new schools, the so-called trust schools—and that children should have a fair right of admission to all the schools in the group. Since the Bill excludes academies and CTCs from the general scope of the requirement of admission fora—although we can return to the issue of funding agreements, and no doubt the Minister will do so—there is no absolute assurance that children with special educational needs or with disabilities will be treated completely fairly.
	We say that because it is already quite clear that some head teachers object to taking on children with these needs. The Special Education Consortium, which brings together a whole range of voluntary and other agencies concerned with children in these groups, reports that a number of parents have told them that they have received a very unwelcoming response from head teachers who are obviously anxious to avoid admitting such children. This may be because they are concerned about the impact it may have on their standing in the league tables and about the additional demands often made on teachers and the school as a whole in admitting children with special educational needs. There is, therefore, at least the seed of a possible conflict.
	We believe that admission fora could go a very long way to resolving this problem, but only if all the schools in the group among which parents are free to choose are included in the scope of the admission forum. I can hardly say that more strongly because if schools are excluded from it or are not subject to the same legal requirements, there will be a temptation to avoid taking such children.
	We also believe that the fora must issue a report about the whole pattern of admissions over the year in which they report back, and, in this respect, we must be able to ask all the schools in the area to contribute to the report if it is to be accurate and thorough. The Government are bringing about a major change in the educational structures and have said that they want to see a fair admissions system; we believe the responsibility of fora is, as far as possible, to ensure that there is a fair admissions system and that all schools contribute to the needs of these groups.
	A wider consideration—to which the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, has drawn our attention several times in this Committee—is the needs of children from economically heavily disadvantaged areas. We also want to ensure that admissions recognise their particular needs and that schools respond to those needs to the limit of their abilities.
	To sum up, the purpose of these amendments is to require all schools to be part of admission fora, and to include all schools within the requirement to enable a proper, thorough and comprehensive report to be made about admissions in an authority's area. In that way, we would go a long way towards ensuring fairness for all children and that all children's potential needs are recognised. I beg to move.

Lord Adonis: Perhaps I may intervene early in these discussions because I think I can meet almost all the points raised by the noble Baroness.
	Amendments Nos. 148A, 154A and 154B seek to add academies and CTCs to the list of schools on which admissions forums can report, and the governing bodies of foundation and voluntary-aided schools to the list of bodies from which the admissions forum can request information. In the case of foundation and voluntary-aided schools, Clause 39(3) already covers this; new subsection (1B)(c) specifically provides for the governing bodies of foundation and voluntary-aided schools. Academies, through their funding agreements, are required to comply with admissions legislation and the school admissions code as it applies to admissions authorities in the maintained sector. Therefore, where a school forum and an admissions forum have an academy or CTC in their area, they will be able to include them in the report without the need for these amendments.
	We obviously agree with everything that the noble Baroness said in relation to Amendments Nos. 148B and 157 in respect of disabled children and those with special educational needs, and in having regard to social and economic disadvantage. These matters are in fact covered in the regulations, the illustrative version of which I have already circulated to noble Lords. Page 215 of the big pack of illustrative regulations contains the draft regulations in respect of the reports to be prepared by admissions forums. Regulation 2(2) states that they shall include,
	"the ethnic and social mix of pupils attending schools in the area of the authority and the factors that affect this ... the extent to which existing and proposed admission arrangements serve the interests of looked after children, children with disabilities and children with special educational needs ... and how well the hard to place pupil protocol",
	which governs the allocation of hard-to-place pupils between schools,
	"has worked and how many children have been admitted to each school under the protocol".
	We want admissions forums for precisely the reason the noble Baroness gave—to be proactive in ensuring that admissions arrangements in their area operate fairly and promote community well-being. That is why we have given them the power to produce these reports. It is also why the Bill gives them the right to make referrals to the adjudicator of any school in their area which they believe is not fulfilling those duties in respect of its admission arrangements.
	On Amendment No. 148, we believe it is unlikely that any admissions forum would not wish to prepare and publish a report, given their new strength and role in considering how well admissions arrangements are working to promote choice and access. Forums will have to act in accordance with the code, which will recommend preparation of these reports and will be backed up by regulations. I hope that I have met almost all the points that the noble Baroness raised.

Lord Rix: I added my name to AmendmentNo. 148; for some inexplicable reason, it is not attached to Amendments Nos. 148A or 148B. That is a serious omission from my point of view, because obviously the needs of disabled children and those with special educational needs have to be tied to the obligation for proper inspections and reports on how they are treated by local education authorities. However, I have to leave it to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, as to whether she accepts the Minister's very clear explanation. She, perhaps, is more au fait with the wishes of the Special Education Consortium than I am at present. I support both amendments and hope that the Minister's response has made it possible for the noble Baroness to withdraw Amendment No. 148.

Lord Dearing: I hear the call. The amendment which I shall advocate states:
	"In discharging its role a schools admissions forum shall have particular regard to the actual and potential contribution of schools in areas of economic and social disadvantage to the well being of the communities in those areas".
	The issue is very much the same as that which we discussed on the first day in Committee, when I argued the same point in relation to local authorities' decisions about schools. The Minister gave a very helpful reply in which he said that when new schools are under consideration, regulations will state that the criteria should include promoting community cohesion, the aims of inclusiveness and partnership working, and the delivery of the Every Child Matters agenda. That went a long way towards meeting my concerns and I might have shut up altogether if he had gone on to say that a clause would be included which stated that this matter would be on their minds in relation particularly to communities with social and economic disadvantage. I hope that he will feel able to go that far.
	At the centre of my concerns is well-being in the round for those communities, which goes further than the specifics to which the Minister referred. These communities are likely to experience a greater degree of social and health problems than most, and a greater experience of overcrowding of accommodation, family tensions and debt than most. Truancy may be more prevalent, as well as all that goes with stress, poverty and parental inability to help their children either educationally or as effective advocates of their needs and providers for material needs.
	To deliver for those families and children, schools and social and basic medical services need to be collocated in the community. We need a holistic approach. I admit that that is what every community would like, but to the well heeled, who can look after themselves, it matters less to have those schools and services collocated in their community. They will see to it much more effectively than parents in areas of economic and social disadvantage that their children get what they need. They know how to work the system and, if need be, can afford doctors and lawyers—for example, in statementing—to get their rights.
	The noble Lord, Lord Judd, who happens not to be in his place, said when we were debating my earlier amendment that politics is about priorities and that Governments have to make choices. He said that the priority should be getting resources to the most deprived. The Government have fully accepted this in their policy for city academies, which represent a huge commitment to areas of greatest need. I am arguing for an extension of that thinking.
	If we are to do our best to see that the socially and economically deprived get the resources which we all want them to have, we need to accept that we shall do this best if we can deliver these services in an integrated way in the community where they live, through a community capability that is centred on the school, and make sure that the school is a good school. I recall well the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, in the previous debate, to which I made a brief response, that communities are not really like this and are changing all the time. I acknowledge that there are communities—for example, the great local authority-funded estates created in the 1930s—which by their nature are not bubbling with energy and change.
	The noble Lord, Lord Judd, referred to the community in west Cumberland which he knows well, and I know such communities in my home city of Hull and its vicinity. I hope that we can carry forward the Government's thinking on academies, which is a very powerful statement of their commitment to those communities. We should say to admissions forums, "At a time of declining rolls through demographic features, which we can do nothing about, there is a danger that these schools will die through attrition. You should have in mind that danger in particular in discharging your responsibilities".

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I endorse very much what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said. My name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley are added to the amendment. Unfortunately, my noble friend cannot be here today, but both of us feel strongly that the noble Lord's points are very real. The potential contribution of schools to their community, and particularly to deprived communities, is enormous. We very much welcome the Government's extended school model which enables that to happen. We are seeing it already with the Sure Start programme being linked to primary schools and nursery centres with parenting classes, infant clinics and so on. We hope that with the roll out of the extended school programme we shall see secondary schools providing youth facilities, extended sporting facilities and other such facilities so that the school becomes the hub within the community. This exists in a number of communities. There is almost an idealistic model of what a good community school might be and what it contributes to its community. Perhaps in rural communities one sees it in primary schools. We know very well that if you shut down primary schools in rural communities, you often shut down the hub of the community. That is one reason why, during the passage of the 2004 education Act, this House insisted that special considerations should be taken into account when it was proposed to shut rural schools.
	This applies just as much to schools in deprived communities where a vicious cycle of decline can become apparent. A school can become unpopular and is deserted by middle class parents, who know which schools get good GCSE results. The school gradually declines and fails, numbers fall away and it is left with just disadvantaged children—what we have termed in the past sink schools. We agree with the Government that sometimes the only solution is to close such schools down and try to regenerate through other schools. However, on other occasions it is vitally important that these schools are not closed down and that they are regenerated. We recognise that on occasion the Government use the academies programme to try to regenerate schools. As we discussed the other day, some Liberal Democrat local authorities are co-operating with the Government to do precisely that.
	On occasion it is vitally important that the admissions authority should recognise the overall well-being of the community, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, has stressed, rather than look narrowly at the achievements of the school. As I say, I very much endorse the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, in that regard. I also endorse the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. We should include academies and city technology colleges within the remit of admissions authorities. We have in the Bill the remit for the admissions authorities. The noble Lord says that we do not have to include them because they are in the funding agreements; but the funding agreements are not in the Bill. We know of occasions when the funding agreements are honoured in the breach and are not being adhered to. Yes, you can go through the whole process of going to the adjudicator, but it is a very long, drawn-out and difficult process. Surely, if this is within the remit of the admissions authority—and this Bill is trying to set out the remit of the admissions authority—they should be included in the Bill within the remit, rather than being a little bit extra on the side in other agreements that people have to know about.

Baroness Buscombe: I would like to be helpful to the House and to the Minister, which is not something that I normally am. Given that we are a self-regulating House, and certainly for my benefit, it would be easier if all noble Lords spoke before the Minister. It is slightly disjointed and difficult for the Minister and somewhat repetitive if he then has to come back and respond a second time. I am not sure why this did not happen in this case.

Lord Adonis: Let me own up to it being entirely my fault. I thought that all the amendments in the group were moved by the Liberal Democrats, and I failed to notice that one was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. I am extremely sorry, and no disrespect whatever was meant to him. Because I thought that all the amendments had been moved by the Liberal Democrats, I thought that I could meet most of the points and short-circuit what would otherwise have been a longer debate. I have answered most of the points, but I will make two more points.
	Of course, we are discussing particularly the duties on admissions forums. I entirely endorse all the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, about the wider context within which schools work and the programmes of support and investment that are required to link schools more effectively with their communities and to tackle disadvantage. We are taking a good deal of that forward. First and foremost, we are spending50 per cent more on schools in real terms than we were nine years ago, which has been particularly focused in areas of disadvantage. Frankly, that makes a bigger difference than any set of detailed regulations that one could impose from this House, which schools do not have the capacity to meet.
	On the specific issue of the duties on admissions forums, which would be laid down in their reports, the issues raised by the noble Lord are covered. They would include reporting on the ethnic and social mix of pupils attending schools in the area of the authority, and the factors that affect them. I take all the issues raised by the noble Lord to be included among the factors that affect this. In case that is not a sufficient power, these are some of the things that they must report on; they may report on anything that they wish to. That would also include details of other matters that might affect how fairly admissions arrangements serve the interests of children and parents in the authority. I take the point that spelling things out with greater clarity can have advantages. These are illustrative regulations. I will, of course, take full account of this short debate and the contributions made when we come to lay the final version of those regulations.
	Finally, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, I will of course send her a copy of the letter that I sent to the noble and learned Lord. I try to copy letters round on all these issues and place them in the Library of the House. However, it is not the case that funding agreements are not public documents; they are. They are published; and every single one is on the website of the DfES. That involves far more transparency in the arrangements governing academies than it does any other state school in the country, no other one of which has its governing arrangements posted on the DfES website and so readily available.

The Lord Bishop of Peterborough: I thank the Minister very much for introducing these amendments. As he said, they are in response to our discussions about these matters and I hope that the amendments will help us to strengthen the advice that we currently give to our schools and, indeed, enable our schools to be fully inclusive in the way that we intend.

Lord Lucas: I am delighted that the Government have introduced their amendments and that the right reverend Prelate was complicit in them, because they will allow a gentle but much-needed improvement in the way that some Church schools approach admissions.
	Generally, I take the view that admissions criteria and arrangements have to tackle some insoluble problems and will never be perfect, but there are two principles that should be borne in mind; one is fairness and access for all and the other is to give parents some sense of stability and the comfort of knowing that they will be able to get a reasonable school, from one point of view or another, for their children.
	I have particular difficulties with banding as a method, not because there are not some justifications for it in certain circumstances, but because it produces an unholy level of uncertainty for parents who are looking to know which school they might possibly get their children into. Not only can a school's catchment area vary year by year, but its admissions policy can vary in four or five different ways, according to the random pattern of applications and how children score in an examination. That makes it extremely difficult to know whether or not one has a right of entry to, say, Camden School for Girls. This pitches parents into the sort of arena that those who patronise the independent sector are used to, but which is none the less a source of considerable discomfort for them.
	In the end, when one looks at banding arrangements that have been running for some while, as in some of the CTCs, one finds that the middle classes can work them just as well as they can any other kind of admission arrangements. They notice where the wider bands are; they get tutors to tell their children how to score within those bands, which they do; and the proportion of the middle class that gets into the good CTCs starts to creep up. Not surprisingly, the middle class is a very resourceful and determined group. However, I should like to see an admissions arrangement that genuinely offered all children a chance to access all schools.
	The only sensible way of doing that is through a completely unconditional ballot, although I am not saying that that ballot would by any means be applied to anything like a whole school population. When we were discussing religion, the right reverend Prelate said that he would like to reserve a part of a religious school's intake for people of that religion. There is a very good argument for allowing schools to have a strong bias towards people who live close to them because, in many cases, schools are part of the community.
	Those who run grammar schools would doubtless argue that they have to select at least a proportion of their pupils, although that is not an argument that the Government have accepted in the case of Northern Ireland. There, they have said that, although a school can have an academic character and say that it will be run on academic lines, all parents should be allowed to choose it as the school to which they would like their child to be admitted. I think that that is reasonable: schools operate in that way. If you look at, for example, the sixth-form colleges in Cambridge—Hills Road and Long Road—you will see that there is no substantial difference in admission criteria between the two. One happened to be the boys' grammar school and the other the girls' grammar school. They have evolved so that Hills Road is the more academic and Long Road is the broader, and they are both extremely good sixth-form colleges.
	Schools will move and change in that direction and, by establishing an academic character for a school, as in Hills Road, you can create an academic school without having to select. You can certainly have academic schools that do not select a proportion of their children on academic criteria but, rather, rely on parents to apply and still end up with an academic school. Parents, being mildly sensible, will not generally pitch their ordinary kid into the high-flown world of a top academic grammar; they will take advice on subjects and decide to choose another school.
	I think that there is scope for opening up every school in England on the basis that a proportion of the children—I would start at 25 per cent—should be admitted, or be capable of admission, by unconditional ballot. It would also be possible to combine that with giving parents an unconditional right to have access to an individual school on the old catchment area basis. Parents would be faced with a form that said that, if they put Holland Park Comprehensive as one of their chosen schools, they would be guaranteed a place there if none of their higher preferences accepted them. But they could also go in for the ballot at any number of other schools and they might well find that they were successful. They would then be guaranteed a place at a school that was sensibly close to them and, although that school might not be acceptable to them, they would at least have certainty. Quite a large proportion of the population want the certainty of getting their children into a neighbourhood school or one that is convenient for them. At the same time, that system would open up the possibility of their applying to any school and getting into what have previously been closed geographical or religious ghettos, where only the rich kids go because their parents have bought the right house or have been to mass every weekend for the past five years and have contributed to Church funds—or whatever the admission criteria might be. Obviously you cannot do that immediately, but you can work in that way.
	If you find a school that, in practice, is not admitting 25 per cent of its children by ballot because its admissions are taken up by those who have a right to be in that school, then you allow that school to expand or, if it will not expand, you adjust the catchment area. So, over time, it should be possible to work to a position where any good school is admitting children roughly in the proportion of 75 per cent who are there by right and 25 per cent by ballot. Therefore, any child, within the possible constraints of transport, would have a right to apply to, and have a decent chance of getting into, any school, which is not the case at the moment. That would put us in a position where we could say that we were genuinely opening up access to our best schools to all pupils, which is what I would like to aim at as an objective.
	I appreciate that the Government are heading in the right direction, and I hope that, over time, our Front Benches will reach agreement on what we intend to achieve in the way of admission arrangements. To my mind, co-ordinated admissions have been a great success. They give a great deal of comfort and ease to parents and they reduce the possibility of people finding themselves cast into limbo. We can continue to improve on that and we can continue to work away at ensuring that those who happen to be born within the catchment area of a school that does not suit them for one reason or another have a good chance of getting into another school that does suit them, whatever the geographical or religious admission criteria that apply to that school at present.

Baroness Buscombe: I wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 172, 173 and 174 concerning our objections to some aspects of the role of the adjudicator. First, on banding, I would like to remind the House that we have already made some difference to the Bill. We are grateful that the other evening the Minister accepted our amendment to require decisions on banding to be left to governing bodies. That is a step in the right direction rather than banding being decided by local authorities.
	Amendment No. 172 probes the thinking behind the broad powers granted to the adjudicator under Clause 43. The amendment leaves out the key words,
	"whether or not he would be required to do so for the purpose of determining the objection".
	This is a broad power. It would mean that a person could make an objection on frivolous or vexatious grounds, and that this would then give the adjudicator the power to investigate every aspect of a school's admissions arrangements and make changes. That could happen even where nobody objected to the offending part of the arrangements.
	New subsection (5B) of Section 90 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 also refers to a decision of the adjudicator or Secretary of State on whether,
	"it would be appropriate for changes to be made to the admission arrangements, whether in the light of his decision on the objection or otherwise".
	Amendment No. 173 removes this part of the clause. Again, we see no reason why potentially frivolous or vexatious complaints justify the complete review ofa school's admission arrangements. Where the adjudicator considers the decision of an admissions authority, it should be limited to the grounds of appeal listed in the original complaint.
	There should also be a right of appeal from the adjudicator. Amendment No. 174 would allow appeals where a party to the proceedings before the adjudicator is dissatisfied on a point of law. The adjudicator will have to state a case for the decision of the High Court. In another place, amendments were tabled to give a right of appeal to the Secretary of State. We accept that to introduce the Secretary of State into the process would risk politicising decisions that must be made. We therefore propose the High Court, which, I am sure we all agree, is sufficiently independent to avoid this.
	We have heard much from the Government about how we do not need an appeal from the adjudicator because he is already an appeal body. However, this is not strictly the case. In the judgment given in November 1999 in the case of Regina v The Schools Adjudicator ex parte Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Mr Justice Latham ruled that:
	"The provisions of the Act that I have already cited make it plain that the Schools Adjudicator has what is, in effect, an original jurisdiction to determine the objection".
	This was restated in the decision in the case of The Queen on the Application of Metropolitan Borough of Wirral v The Chief Schools Adjudicator, given on 14 December 2000. Mr Justice Ouseley ruled that,
	"it is plain that the adjudicator is exercising an original jurisdiction as to the appropriateness of admission arrangements. He is not reviewing a local education authority's decision, though obviously what they determine and why is very material".
	I admit that, when the decision-maker is a local authority, the analogy of an appeal works well. The local authority makes its decision and then various aggrieved parties can refer the matter to the adjudicator. For example, where a local authority proposes the discontinuance of a certain situation, the problem arises because we are moving away from a system in which local authorities make most of the important decisions relating to schools in an area, towards one of independent, self-governing trust and foundation schools making their own decisions. In such circumstances, a right of appeal, however limited, is essential. It is important that, when the adjudicator overturns the decision of a governing body on its admission arrangements, the governing body can challenge this decision relatively inexpensively and swiftly.
	Similarly, local authorities will be able to refer proposals to the adjudicator where a school decides to acquire a trust. In such circumstances, the adjudicator will be able to overturn the decision of the governing body, which will have no statutory right of appeal.
	At present, the only recourse for schools which object to the adjudicator's decision is judicial review. As noble Lords will know, this is an extremely blunt, expensive and untimely tool. Some local authorities can afford to challenge the decisions of the adjudicator through judicial review, but schools and parents cannot. Many will decide that they have more important things to spend money on than this lengthy process. It cannot be right that bad decisions go unchallenged simply because the aggrieved party cannot afford it. The Newport Free Grammar School in Essex had its admissions policy overturned and, even though the governing body was dissatisfied, it simply could not afford judicial review on grounds of cost. The school's website stated:
	"The only recourse the school could have is to go to judicial review, costing in the region of £50,000—way outside the school's resources".
	It went on to state:
	"The Government seems to want to promote self-governing schools, yet is not prepared to allow Governors to govern without interference from LEAs and quangos like the Schools Adjudicator".
	There are further areas where some right of appeal from the adjudicator may be important. In a number of cases, the adjudicator will be given decision-making powers directly, without the case first being decided by the local authority. For example, where a local authority is given the right to propose a new community school, the adjudicator makes the initial decision. Similarly, the Bill transfers from the Secretary of State responsibility for various decisions relating to non-playing-field land, involving disputes between foundation or voluntary schools and the local authority over the sale of land and the division of any proceeds; decisions over land transfer disputes when schools change category; and disputes over land required by a local authority for a new school. Here again, the adjudicator is given the initial decision-making power. If the adjudicator is an appeal body, as the Government say, where is the appeal in these cases?
	It is essential that the adjudicator process has the confidence of parents and governors. A right of appeal may help to ensure that fewer people leave the process dissatisfied. Where the adjudicator is simply implementing the law, an appeal will demonstrate this clearly and remove any risk that the adjudicator is viewed as overly powerful and unaccountable.

Lord Adonis: I shall not speak against my own amendments, which I have already addressed. I thank the right reverend Prelate for his support for them.
	On Amendment No. 162 of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, raising the important issue of how we keep the national effects of admissions arrangements and their social consequences under review, we agree with her point. As part of his role, the new schools commissioner will use admission forums' reports as part of a two-yearly review of fair access; that is in his job description. He will report to the Secretary of State, and that will of course be made available to both Houses to consider. I am sure that this important document will give rise to a good deal of debate when it appears. I think the noble Baroness will welcome this role for the schools commissioner, which meets the point she is making. An additional statutory review is not needed.
	On the noble Baroness's Amendment No. 171B, we agree that admission authorities should comply with the provisions of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, as amended by this Bill, on admissions. I should make clear that Clause 42 does not give them any flexibility to escape that requirement, which appears to be a concern.
	Clause 42 and associated regulations will prevent admission authorities changing approved admission arrangements for three years. After that, admission authorities for these schools may review and amend their admission policies, but must still comply with legislation and, under the new requirements, act in accordance with the school admissions code. They cannot propose revised admissions arrangements outwith the code after that period, which meets the noble Baroness's point. It is currently possible for them to do so, as she said, and you must then rely on a reference to the adjudicator to bring the admissions arrangements back in line. That will subsequently not be possible.
	Amendments Nos. 172 to 174, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, would restrict the role of the adjudicator on admissions. As the noble Baroness said, existing legislation restricts the adjudicatorto considering only the part of the admission arrangements that the objection directly refers to. So, although other parts of a school's admission policy may have a direct bearing on how a criterion is applied, or be blatantly unfair, he currently has no power whatever to amend them. We do not think that that is a reasonable position or one that helps adjudicators to see that schools act in accordance with the admissions code. That is why the Bill allows the adjudicator to consider whether other aspects of a school's admission arrangements are fair, and to change them—I stress—in accordance with the code if they are not. The adjudicator does not have any unilateral powers beyond that.
	That is a reasonable approach. It does not give the adjudicator unilateral powers to change admissions arrangements outside the code, nor to change those of any school which is in accordance with the code. A wide array of fair admissions practices are entirely consistent with the code. The adjudicator must also act reasonably; if he does not do so, he can be subject to judicial review. The noble Baroness recognised that adjudicators are subject to judicial review at the moment.
	Under the new arrangements established by the Bill, the adjudicator's determinations, along with the admissions arrangements of schools, will be fixed for three years. At the moment, they are fixed for just one year, and some schools—for example, in respect of partial selection—have been challenged every year. Having to defend its practices and make representations to the adjudicator annually is a huge burden on a school. We have taken the view that stability of admissions is essential, which is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made in a different way. Ensuring that arrangements are fixed for three years and that adjudicators' determinations hold sway for that period will stabilise the system and prevent practices that have been determined by an adjudicator being subject to repeated early challenge, as can happen at the moment.
	Amendment No. 174 provides for appeals and references to the High Court by way of case stated. On this, I have to stick very closely to my legal brief, which says that case stated is a rather old-fashioned procedure, more usually used for criminal cases. It is unusual for this mechanism to be used in tribunals. It is by nature a form of consultation with a higher court to obtain an answer on a point of law. It does not preclude judicial review since, if an adjudicator were to refuse to state a case, that decision would itself be amenable to judicial review. We consider it preferable that parties to adjudicators' decisions should have a right to seek judicial review where it is not the merits of a particular decision that are considered, but whether there has been a decision which is outside the adjudicator's jurisdiction or is irrational, or where the decision-making process can be said to have been unfair procedurally. Applications for judicial review also require permission from the Administrative Court, which acts as a filter and reduces the burden on the courts.
	I am not competent to give further responses to the noble Baroness if she wants to challenge that. If, when she has read what I have said in Hansard, she wants to come back, I will engage in correspondence with her on the precise relationship between the adjudicator and the High Court.
	Amendments Nos. 160 and 161 were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I am glad that he recognised that the new co-ordinated admissions process for secondary schools is producing greater certainty and better outcomes for parents. In particular, it has had the beneficial effect of preventing parents holding multiple offers, which was a particular problem. It has brought about a welcome increase in the proportion of parents who receive offers of a place in a school that they have positively chosen early in the admissions process. Even where a child cannot be offered one of the schools preferred by their parents, statutes and regulations govern the obligations of local authorities to offer a place at an alternative school or otherwise to provide access to full-time education.
	The noble Lord raised the issue of the allocation of school places by ballot. In fact, this is an acceptable, but rarely used, means of determining who should be offered places at oversubscribed schools and can be used to allocate a proportion, or even all, of the places at an oversubscribed school in accordance with the code of practice. The revised code on admissions will make that explicit, which may stimulate some interest in this option. When I met the noble Lord to discuss this, I told him that the idea had attracted the attention of Sir Peter Lampl and his excellent Sutton Trust. My office will put Sir Peter in touch with the noble Lord so that they can seek to popularise this interesting idea.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I shall also speak to Amendment No. 165. These amendments probe the idea of the choice adviser, whose role is established by the brief Clause 40. Amendment No. 162B should perhaps have been included in the group of amendments that dealt with the voice of the child. It is a neat amendment that makes clear that choosing a secondary school should be for parents and children, not just parents.
	The Minister made available to us some of the draft guidance on choice advisers, which has got it right. Paragraph 7 states:
	"Choice Advice is about helping and supporting families including mothers, fathers, adults with caring responsibility and children to make the best and most realistic choice of secondary school".
	After that, it goes downhill. It is full of detail about what choice advisers should know and do and how they should target disadvantaged families, but it constantly refers to parents and carers, not children. However, it is slightly redeemed by paragraph 17, which states:
	"Wherever possible the child should be included and provided with appropriate advice so that they are able to express an informed view about a choice of school".
	This is an important point. When a child is 10 or 11, it is old enough to take a view about the school that it wants to go to, and it should be involved in the process of choice. The guidance is right, but I would like to see more emphasis on including children in the discussions. That should be in the Bill. Changing "parents of children" to "parents and their children" achieves what we want and sets the right tone. I hope the Minister is sympathetic to this amendment.
	Amendment No. 165 was drafted before the draft guidance was available and reflects the Local Government Association's view that guidance about what the Government wish local authorities to do is needed because the Bill makes clear that this system is to be run through the local authority. Local authorities now have extensive guidance, including a full-blown scheme for accrediting choice advisers. In general, these Benches applaud the vision and the degree to which the Government are anxious that each local authority works out its own scheme. The guidance provides a variety of models that might be followed.
	We have one query about the process. The Government are making available £6 million a year—£12 million in total—to get the scheme moving. That works out at £300 per primary school. Paragraph 16 of the guidance puts the situation very clearly when it states that it,
	"is clear that Choice Advice should be targeted at about 30 per cent of families".
	A typical primary school will therefore work with about 10 families. The examples, which talk about groups of perhaps 10 or 12 primary schools together, make clear that it is a full-time job for a choice adviser. I applaud the Government on setting up the procedures for choice advisers, but are they really providing enough resources to fund their proposals? One of the problems is that neither schools nor local authorities have spare resources with which to fund the extra posts. I beg to move.

Lord Skidelsky: I speak to Amendment No. 163A standing in my name. It is a constructive amendment, designed to strengthen support for parental preferences, which is the object of Clause 40. The philosophy behind it is simple—the more the system of centralised allocation shifts towards one of parental choice-based allocation, the more knowledge and information parents need to make their choices effectively, and the greater the responsibility of the Government to provide that information or make it accessible.
	The Government clearly understand their duty to provide a greater information base to support parental preferences but I am not sure that the choice advice machinery to be administered by choice advisers is quite the right one. It needs to be supplemented by something else. My criticism is that the advice is to be targeted on a small number of parents—at one time in one passage it is 6 per cent and in another passage it is perhaps 30 per cent. But only that group of parents is deemed to need it. The number of parents who could benefit from this information is much larger. More seriously, the government guidance refers to the information which the choice adviser will need to have, not to the information which parents will need to have. The information will be with the adviser, not the parents. It is almost as though the Government have a model of a GP/patient relationship. I am sure that that is not their intention, but it does unconsciously reflect their view of the nature of the target group.
	The assumption that all other parents have access to the information they need to make a choiceis wrong. Specifically, parents are likely to lack what they need most of all—information about comparative school performance in that locality. I have looked at a number of websites. Some have exam and key stage results and some do not, but none has local league tables. The best a school usually does is to publish its exam results and then compare them to average pass rates for England and Wales, which is not enough for a parent to see how good a school is in comparison with other local schools.
	Moreover, information on school websites is not provided in standardised form, which is necessary for easy comparison across schools to be made. In fact, I have to say that the websites of most schools in this country are primitive compared with those of American schools, which give much more information. Noble Lords who are interested in checking this out might compare the website of the Frederick Douglass Academy in New York with that of almost any maintained school website in the United Kingdom. It is argued that the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph and other high quality newspapers publish reliable league tables and that those reports are available online. However, many parents do not read those newspapers and many more do not have access to the internet.
	The conclusion I draw from all this is that information which parents need to make an informed choice is available to the persistent inquirer—and guess who that is likely to be—but in a scattered and non-standardised form. My idea is to concentrate this information in school information centres and to make it available to parents in a simple, readable and, above all, standardised form. I envisage there being such a centre—perhaps this is an idealised vision—in every town centre or high street into which parents can easily drop, receive information packs about the schools in their area, have their questions answered, and swap stories and information with other parents over a cup of tea or coffee. Above all, that information centre should be independent. It may be commissioned by the local education authority, but it should be independent of the local education authority and in a separate building.
	I am also strongly attracted by the idea of annual school fairs, which I first came across in one of the districts in Manhattan, at which schools display their wares once a year. They were extremely popular with parents in a very deprived area, who had been alienated from the school system, but who loved these fairs and, as a result of them, got much more involved with the schools.
	I accept that there are cost implications. Implementing my scheme will cost more than the £12 million over two years the Government propose to allocate to choice advice. I recognise that one or two districts already have parents' advice centres. I notice from the guidance that this is done in Tower Hamlets. My impression is that these are targeted at disadvantaged and ethnic minority children rather than being a resource for all parents choosing a school at the end of primary schooling. Still, information is costly and I submit that the Government need to think hard about what information parents need to make, what the Minister often calls, "an evidence-based choice", and how best to supply it in a customer friendly way.

Lord Lucas: I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said. There is a demand for this information from all parents—I am very well aware of that from my work with the Good Schools Guide—from those in the most deprived circumstances to those who are relatively affluent. Parents tend to be very busy. A lot of them are uninformed about schools; all of them want comfort and help when undertaking an extremely difficult decision; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said, the quality and consistency of information out there is well below par—certainly with regard to easy access. School websites are often dire and local authority information provision varies from the really quite good to the extremely difficult, obscure and unhelpful. There is not a good consistent standard there. One of the things a school adviser could do is to help bring up the general level of available information to a common and consistent standard and, ideally, as the noble Lord said, to something approaching the American model rather than the "Do we have to do anything?" standard that occupies a lot of British websites. To have that co-ordinated in a way which makes it easier for a parent to access it on a casual basis would be a great advantage. As I will come on to, one of the difficulties I see with the Government's scheme is the question of how this adviser finds the parents they are talking about.
	My amendment focuses on the need for independence. A lot of the time this adviser will be the Thomas à Becket character who wishes to give clear, honest and good advice regardless of the consequences to himself. If they do not have a position that enables them to do that without fear of imminent execution, they may well not have the courage of the right reverend Prelate's predecessor and may temper their advice accordingly. That problem has become prevalent in, for example, the educational psychology service, where many people rely for their bread and butter on a relationship with a particular local authority. If the local authority likes to be dilatory, difficult and restrictive about giving statements, it is the common experience of parents that you will get a relatively bad service from those educational psychologists because they know who is paying their bills.
	It is necessary to have a measure of independence because, much of the time, a competent adviser will say, "Don't go to that school in Dorset. You are much better off if you hop across the boundary into Hampshire. It has the provision that you want, it has easy access so you have a good chance of getting in" or, "No, whatever they say, that school does not really provide well for your child's special need but there is very good provision a couple of miles away and, if you can establish a special need—and this is how to do it—you will have a reasonable chance of getting your child in". Giving advice that is in the interests of the child and the parent will often be advice that the local authority wishes had not been given, to give it an easier life.
	From the draft guidance, we are clearly envisaging a system that is quite well integrated with the local authority system. I should like to be sure that there is a good guarantee of independent advice; otherwise parents simply will not trust it. I am very grateful to the Minister for having distributed the draft guidance. Exactly how are those advisers going to turn away the middle classes? Yes, they may be targeting the 30 per cent who are most deprived, but if someone like me comes knocking on their door and says that they want help, are they going to say, "Go away"? Once they get a reputation, people who are aware of their existence will be after their services.
	I am puzzled by the Government's idea of the correct budget. If we are aiming for 30 per cent of pupils, we are looking at a budget of about £30 per target family. With the usual overheads, especially if these families have to be tracked down because they are difficult to get to, people will have to spend time at the end of the day at primary schools waiting for those parents to turn up. That will not be a time-efficient process. I suspect that the Minister's budget allows for about 15 minutes per target family, which is about a quarter of the time required to give a reasonable standard of service.
	I am surprised that in-year admissions will not be catered for. That is one real problem for parents who are moving. We are trying to encourage a mobile and responsive labour market and make it easier for people to move around the country. Getting into schools out of term, or just moving generally, creates immense problems in our current system. You cannot even consider a place in a school until you have an address. If you get the wrong address, you may find that there is not a school place within five miles. You have no time, are out of the area, have no local contacts or infrastructure of other parents to talk to to find out what is going on, and no existing school to turn to for advice. Those people most need such advice. It is very helpful to the fundamental economy of this country that moving should be made easier for those people. They should be a target of the system.
	I will be interested to hear how the noble Lord envisages that the system will work in practice. If it is aimed at disadvantaged people, how will they be tracked down without an awful lot of the money going into the system being spent just on the process of finding the parents, rather than giving them useful advice?

Lord Adonis: In respect of the websites, too, I think I can defend the schools. The noble Lord referred to a specific school. I refer him to a school whose website I was looking at only yesterday: Shireland school, in a very deprived area of Smethwick, which has the most fantastic website. I will look at his website after he looks at mine and we can then see whether they can hold their own against each other.
	The noble Lord mentioned the figure of 6 per cent—this relates directly to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—which is a very important point and one of the really alarming statistics in the education system. Six per cent of parents failed to complete an application form at all for their children. It is a good part of the reason why often, at the beginning of September, we have the problem to which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred, of children who do not have places in schools. If ever there was a case made for parent pupil support workers, to whom the noble Lord referred—and I think that the choice advisers will play a part of that role regarding parents—it is that very alarming statistic.
	On Amendment No. 165, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we have already issued guidance on the choice advice to which she referred. The new code on school admissions could be used to make that statutory, if we so wished, by including provisions on choice advice within that code, which is to be statutory. We shall reflect further on whether to do so in the light of this debate.
	On Amendment No. 165A, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, as I said, we will look at how we can strengthen requirements on local authorities to see that the advice is independent.
	I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and that by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about providing advice for children. We accept, of course, that children do and should play a very big part in the choice of school that they go to, but we do not think that regulation is the best way of regulating relations between parents and their children, and it is the parents who actually submit the form. We therefore need to be careful that we get that balance right.
	Amendment No. 163A, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, addresses school information centres. I listened carefully to what he said and think that he made some very good points on the obligation to provide general advice in a standardised format as well as targeted advice given by advisers themselves. There are a number of practical issues here but I will reflect further on his comments to see whether we might give a significant impetus to that idea. He also mentioned school fairs. They play an important part in the decisions taken by parents on schools. We strongly encourage them, and indeed most local authorities operate them. The new schools admission code will say that school fairs are good practice and an effective way of providing information to a number of parents at once. Guidance on choice advice will also recommend them as one of the ways in which choice advisers should consider reaching local parents.
	I hope that that meets most of the points raised in the debate.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am grateful both to the Minister for replying to the various queries and to all noble Lords who participated. It has been quite a useful debate on choice advisers. I reassure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that we have tabled amendments on pupil and parent support workers. I feel they will be doing a very different task from choice advisers because they will be working with a group of parents within a particular school. As far as their being independent and choice advisers, I am not sure that they should double up. Although they might help at some point, it is not quite the same job.
	I am a little sorry that the Minister does not accept Amendment No. 162B, which, as I say, I think a very neat little amendment. It simply changes the wording in the Bill. The intention is certainly not, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, suggested, that the children should take the decision—it is obviously a decision they take with their parents—but that they should be involved in the decision-making. The involvement of children here is important. Nevertheless, I accept that it is ultimately the parents who have to fill out the form, and that that might provide an excuse for not changing the Bill's wording. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Astor of Hever: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to provide support for the families of children with autism.
	My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as the father of a 13 year-old daughter with autism. The number of cases of autism diagnosed in the United Kingdom has increased tenfold over the past decade, and that has led to a growing recognition that support services are vital to people with autistic spectrum disorders and for their families and carers. Sadly, that has been illustrated by the recent tragedies.
	There is no known cure for autism, but much can be done to support people with the condition and their families. I will refer to autism but mean it to cover all autistic spectrum disorders, as there is a need for provision right across the spectrum. I wish to touch on the range of family support services, including respite and short breaks, shared care and childcare. Such services provide relief for both the carers and the child with autism and can help the child's personal and social development.
	Research has shown that trying to access services and entitlements during the early years is one of the major causes of stress affecting the family life of a child with autism. Three in five families report significant levels of psychological distress, which is more than twice as high as parents in general. Nine out of 10 of the children in a study had significant mental health needs or behavioural difficulties, which is twice the number of those with learning disabilities and 10 times more than children in general. If family needs are assessed from the first instant a problem is identified, and appropriate support and respite are provided, a great deal will be done to relieve this stress. Yet there are too many examples of failure to deliver such support.
	The All-Party Group on Autism, of which I am secretary, published a manifesto in 2003 that outlined a vision for autism services in 2013. Its objective for family support is that,
	"support and training services will be available for all carers, siblings and families immediately following diagnosis",
	and,
	"multi-agency teams in every area will be able to provide accurate and sensitive information to families".
	A similar vision is laid out in the National Service Framework for Children. The framework's standard on disabled people states:
	"Families are offered a range of appropriate family support services through multi-agency packages of care".
	The framework also recognises the need for short breaks, which is particularly acute for the families of children with autism. It recognises that weekends and school holidays are crucial times for short-break services to be delivered. Sadly, the progress of the framework to date has been limited. I hope that the Minister will state that he and his department are still committed to seeing the framework delivered, and that he will be able to give an update on its implementation, particularly of the standard on disabled children and the autism exemplar.
	A recent audit of local authorities and a variety of stakeholders, which was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, emphasised respite services as a priority area with a gap in provision for children with autistic spectrum disorders. This was picked out as an area of high importance and low availability. Can the Minister advise the House on his department's assessment of the report, particularly of the recommendations on respite and family support?
	There is further strong evidence that provision of specific types of family support services is insufficient. A survey by the National Autistic Society found that 70 per cent of carers of children with autism say they cannot return to work due to a lack of appropriate care facilities. Only 15 per cent had received any support from social services in their caring role. As I have already mentioned, short breaks are a vital service for children with autism and their families. However, 90 per cent of short-break schemes have waiting lists. Children with autism account for a third of all those on waiting lists. Such services are frequently not accessible to children with autism. The availability of appropriate childcare is a similar problem. The fact that the Childcare Act will pay particular attention to the needs of disabled children is certainly welcome, but there is concern that local authorities will not be able to meet the demand for the significant level of specialist childcare that would be needed for the families of children with autism to take up work.
	Respite services are needed at certain crucial times, such as during holidays, but, in another survey, almost all parents felt that this need was not being met. Ninety-three per cent of parents did not receive help during holidays, and 87 per cent requested a break from caring. One of the major barriers facing children with autism is a lack of trained professionals to support them. Training is required for all relevant professionals to improve the number and quality of facilities. Many providers of mainstream short-break services, and even of care for disabled children, feel unable to cater for children with autism. Over 80 per cent of service providers want more support and information about autism, and over 60 per cent said they required a specific training package. There is particular difficulty in providing for children with challenging behaviour. Similarly, from the parents' perspective, understanding autism is the most important criteria in choosing a service for their child. Will the Minister outline what his department is doing to improve the awareness and understanding of autism among providers of social care and childcare?
	Investment in the workforce and in specialist services is a vital investment. Offering the right service at the right time can prevent families reaching crisis point. To provide services only in crises, on the other hand, is very costly to the local authority, not to mention extremely distressing for the family. Furthermore, failure to provide services for children with autism only stores up trouble for the future. Some families will continue to access few or no services. Many people with autism continue to live with their parents into adulthood. For others, the pressure will lead to family breakdown and longer-term residential provision. This is an issue of quality of life for both the child and the family. Without support, families can feel isolated and that they have no one to turn to. Where autism-specific services are provided, they usually work well. Social skills groups, for example, are a relatively low-cost initiative that not only develop the child's ability to interact, but provide a regular activity for the child and help to prevent further difficulties.
	There are examples of good practice: working with the voluntary sector to provide guidance to families as soon as a diagnosis is received; the establishment of respite centres, which are attached to schools but are not only for the use of school pupils; and the provision of in-home support, giving parents a break while the child remains in familiar surroundings. Of course, establishing such services and centres requires investment. The Treasury review of children and young people is a golden opportunity to address these issues and to make recommendations for next year's spending review to improve support for families with disabled children. I hope the Minister will consider carefully the issues that I have raised and give this important issue the priority it deserves.

Earl Howe: My Lords, no one is better qualified than my noble friend Lord Astor to speak on this extremely vexed and emotive subject. I congratulate him on having summarised so well the problems that all too often beset the families who struggle to live with autism in their midst. I completely agree with all that he and other noble Lords have said about the lack of adequate support services for autistic people and their carers.
	The National Autistic Society has a great deal to say about those shortcomings, which nowadays apply right across the country. As an Opposition spokesman, I am regularly contacted by anguished parents whose attempts to obtain the correct help for an autistic child have continued for many months and sometimes even for years. Not infrequently, those efforts end in disappointment and failure. Lest there be any doubt, autism is no longer an issue that can remain on the fringes of policy-making. It is a mainstream and very serious concern; it needs confronting, and it requires resources.
	What do we need to be doing? My noble friend mentioned a number of practical steps, such as making sure that needs assessments are available to all those who require them—they are not at present—providing more and better respite services, and appropriate childcare. I often think that one of the worst aspects of living with an autistic child is the isolation. The need for people to feel that they are not alone in having to contend with the sometimes unbearable stress of daily living in such circumstances is very real.
	Parents desperately want their predicament to be understood; they desperately want advice and recognition. The trouble is, the number of professionals sufficiently qualified to provide such help is inadequate, and teacher training does not include enough about children with disabilities. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was absolutely right about that. Indeed, so widespread is the ignorance about autistic spectrum disorders that if a child presents at school with behavioural abnormalities associated with autism, it is often the quality of parenting that falls under the spotlight, rather than the needs of the child. Instead of understanding and help, parents find themselves referred to the child protection unit of social services. Even where a child has been statemented for special educational needs, local authorities will often fight tooth and nail against providing the support that is needed. I agreed wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, on that topic.
	Research by Brunel University involving 750 parents found that most of them viewed dealing with LEAs as a confrontational exercise and that the whole process was a source of extreme stress. Parents are stressed enough without that. We really should be worried by research findings such as those.
	The Government say many of the right things about the importance of meeting the needs of children with SEN, but the reality is quite different. A few days ago, the Education and Skills Committee in another place published a report. Its view, which I share, is that special schools are invaluable for many pupils with behavioural and learning difficulties. Yet the number of special schools went down by 7 per cent between 1977 and last year. This reduction has occurred at a time when demand for SEN services has gone up dramatically.
	The committee made several trenchant criticisms of the Government: the lack of clarity about what is meant by the word "inclusion", a fundamental confusion which has directly resulted in the closure of special schools; the lack of clear strategic direction about the value and the role of special schools; and the complete failure to address the flaws in the SEN system identified by the Audit Commission in 2002 and by Ofsted in 2004. The Audit Commission and Ofsted both pointed to serious inconsistencies in provision, inequality of access to schools, over-complexity in the statementing process and poor outcomes. Here we are in 2006, and we are no further forward in these areas.
	The committee says that where good practice exists in local authorities, the level of parental satisfaction improves greatly. That is wonderful, but if it is so, the obvious questions to the Government are: who is spreading this best practice, and if it is not happening, how best should it be made to happen?
	Again, the White Paper Our health, our care, our say says a lot of good things. It speaks of local councils and the NHS working together to provide joined-up care plans for those who need them. It speaks of offering support for carers, including emergency respite care. How will those good aspirations be targeted towards children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders, and what precisely is being done to implement them? We are living in a time of real financial stringency in the health service and local government. But if we believe that families should be entitled to respite care when they need it; if we believe in streamlining the statementing process; if we believe in placing weight on the preferences that parents express in favour of special schools, then these things need defining explicitly and they need to become universal.
	In the longer term, what will be of most benefit to families and those afflicted with autism is getting closer to the science. The causal mechanisms behind ASD are not known. I have seen a recent Written Answer about research funded by the MRC in this area. How much of this work is directly related to the possible causal mechanisms and to treatments which may ameliorate the worst manifestations of autistic behaviour? This work desperately needs to be done.
	I am sorry to say that the controversy over the safety of MMR, which I find deeply regrettable, has tended to overshadow the more open questions that we should be asking. What, precisely, is damaging the brains of young children at an early age? Why are the numbers of autistic children going up as steeply as they appear to be doing? What can we do to relieve sufferers and their families from the extreme distress and despair that they feel? Until we make autism a mainstream health issue, we are bound to see a repeat of tragedies such as that of Alison Davies and her son. The lack of support, the absence of advice and the dearth of understanding cannot be allowed to continue.

Lord Warner: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, for prompting this important debate. I know that the noble Lord has personal experience, and I pay tribute to the work he has done through his involvement with the All-Party Group on Autism.
	From my time as a director of social services, I understand and appreciate that having a child with autism can add phenomenally to the normal stresses and strains of family life. For children with autism, the world can appear a mystifying and frightening place. They can react with challenging behaviour so that their parents can barely take their eyes off them for a moment. I understand these issues; supporting autistic children and their families is a responsibility that the Government take very seriously indeed.
	A number of noble Lords asked how many children we are talking about. We recognise that the size of the cohort of children with autism and their families seems to be growing. Fifteen or 20 years ago, the standard prevalence rate for children with autism was thought to be four to five per 10,000. A report we commissioned in 2001 from the Medical Research Council on the epidemiology and causes of autism found some agreement with recent prevalence estimates of 60 per 10,000 of children under eight with autism spectrum disorder.
	I am aware of the research mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, undertaken by Dr Gillian Baird—whom I know personally—published in the Lancet last week, on the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in children in the south Thames region. This is an important piece of research: it found a prevalence rate of around 40 per 10,000 for autism and 77 per 10,000 for the full spectrum. This is much closer to the prevalence rate that the National Autistic Society has suggested.
	The south Thames study suggested that much of the increase in the number being identified on the autism spectrum can be put down to greater awareness, better identification and a broadening of diagnostic criteria. However, it looks as though this is a true rise in incidence, a possibility which cannot be ruled out. I am sure that this new prevalence information will be helpful to colleagues in the Treasury and the DfES who are conducting the cross-cutting review.
	Like other noble Lords, I am aware of some tragic events involving parents and their autistic children, and I take this opportunity to express my heartfelt sadness and sympathy to all those involved. We must ensure that parents of children with autism can access services in their own right and that their needs are properly considered. I think particularly of the mental health problems that can be triggered by caring for an autistic child and the feeling that one is coping alone with no support, points to which a number of noble Lords have drawn attention. We are trying hard to make sure that services are in place to help. Community mental health teams offer specialist assessment, treatment and care to adults with mental health problems in their own homes. They may also provide a whole range of community-based services, or be complemented by other community-based teams providing specific functions, such as those of assertive outreach teams. Parents need to know that the services exist and feel able and comfortable to use them.
	In 2001, we published an evidence-based guideline to help GPs and other health and social care professionals know more about the most effective treatments for particular conditions. We also published in 2001 a booklet for service users and carers, Choosing Talking Therapies?, to help them know which questions to ask.
	We have embarked on a new programme to provide more effective and timely access to psychological therapies by connecting interventions currently or potentially available in the workplace, in primary care and other community resources, and to provide rapid access to more specialist services for those who need them.
	We are working on two demonstration sites in Doncaster and Newham, and on a network of smaller regional projects in this area, which will bring together key programmes in the NHS, the voluntary sector and local employers to test various models that could be implemented nationally. They will be of help.
	We have learnt from parents that a break from caring is very important to them, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned. That is why we introduced the carers grant. It is worth £185 million in 2005-06. Children's services account for approximately 20 per cent of the grant, including services for carers of children with disabilities. As parents, we all know that however much we love our children we would sometimes welcome a break from looking after them. We also know how important an uninterrupted night's sleep can be. How much harder that is for the parents of a disabled child who demands much greater effort and energy from his or her parents and where alternative care or babysitting arrangements are harder to come by.
	We know that some of the children most likely to be waiting for short-break services are those with autistic spectrum disorders. The report in March from the Shared Care Network, Still Waiting, reconfirmed this. There are many reasons for the difficulty in recruiting short-break carers, but we are making some progress. The proportion of children who are waiting to receive services has decreased since 1999: it is now about a third rather than a half. I do not want to claim that that is a great achievement, but it is a movement in the right direction. This is far better than it was, but it is far from being good enough. DfES recently published the National Audit of Support, Services and Provision for Children with Low Incidence Needs, which included children at the severe end of the autistic spectrum. It confirmed that family support and respite care are the biggest issues that need to be addressed for families of children with autism.
	However, it gave some examples of good practice where things are working well. For example, a Northamptonshire local authority provides an autism family support team of five which works in the family home and community outside nine-to-five hours and gives access to short breaks of three to four days. We need to build on local examples of good practice like this and have all parts of the country providing these services. Northamptonshire and others have shown that it can be done. It is about the will which exists at the local level to make some of these things happen.
	What is required is more and better partnership work between professionals and agencies to help families. A number of noble Lords have drawn attention to this. A good example of how these partnerships can improve matters is the DfES-funded West Midlands SEN Regional Partnership, which has focused on autism. Over the years, the partnership has mapped provision for autistic children and their families in the region, produced a parent information pack to support parents and, last month, a training policy and framework for those in education, social care, health and the independent and voluntary sector. As a number of noble Lords have said, more professionals and more agencies need to understand the needs of parents of children with autism and provide services that meet people's needs, rather than trying to squeeze people into the framework of services that are available. Areas such as the West Midlands have shown that one can make progress where people choose to work together. We need to encourage that.
	The noble Earl, Lord Howe, drew attention to research. We accept that good quality research is critical. Following the Medical Research Council's report which I mentioned earlier, my department gave £2.5 million to the MRC for autism research. With further funding from the Chief Scientist's Office, Scotland and the MRC, this amount has been topped up to more than £3 million. Six major research projects are now funded. One of them is a£1.3 million pre-school autism communication trial. This is the first large-scale intervention study of its kind and it will look at the effectiveness of a treatment to enhance parent/child communication and the social and language development of the child. It is too early for there to be lessons to learn from these projects, but we are keen that research in this area informs policy.
	An autism research co-ordination group has been established, hosted by DfES, which will publish its first annual report at the end of this month. The aim of the group is to keep Ministers aware of current research activity and its policy implications and to highlight gaps in current research activity.
	There is now a raft of policy initiatives across government for improving services for children. Noble Lords have drawn attention to some of them. One of the exemplars published under the National Service Framework for Children was on autism. It set out an optimal pathway for a boy starting at age three and moving from initial concern, through multi-agency assessment and diagnosis, an ongoing family support plan and early educational intervention, and on through transitions from primary to secondary school and into adult life. Led by the local primary care trust in Islington, a project has been running to implement parts of the exemplar around clarifying the diagnosis and identifying needs for the families. We need to learn the lessons from what has been a largely successful project. This is a good example of that exemplar being tried out on the ground.
	The Early Support programme is a joint DfES, Sure Start and Department of Health initiative. It is the central government mechanism for achieving better co-ordinated family-focused services for young disabled children and their families. The programme produced a series of disability-specific booklets, including a parents' guide on autistic spectrum disorders in 2004. This was produced with a great deal of help from the National Autistic Society and a group called the Parents Autism Campaign for Education, which is now part of the TreeHouse Trust, of which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is the chair of trustees. He has done a great deal of important work in this area to which I pay tribute. The guidance gives information to parents about autism and getting help, and it is available from the DfES Publications Centre. We know that more than 46,000 copies have been distributed and are being used.
	We have increased the amount of money being spent on children's social services. I do not have time to go through a great deal of this, but I draw attention to the DfES's provision of funding to Contact a Family, a national charity providing support, advice and information to families with disabled children. This has been of great help to Contact a Family, which has been able to double the number of families it reaches to 18,000. An external evaluation found that 99 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the service.
	I am not in a position to respond to the important points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, but I shall draw them to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. This has been an important and valuable debate. I shall take away the points to which I have not been able to provide an adequate response and write to noble Lords.

Baroness Buscombe: I rise to speak to a number of amendments on children with special educational needs—Amendments Nos. 164, 254 and 255. This cluster of amendments drives straight to the heart of an issue that is close to many of our hearts. We have already debated the broad implications of special needs education. Indeed, we have also touched on the policy of inclusion that seems to have been adopted across the country, whether deliberately or not, but I wish to return to it briefly now as the real on-the-ground effectiveness of special educational needs provision is in serious need of review.
	I was saddened but not surprised to read that SEN children are nine times more likely to be excluded than children without statements. The Committee will agree that that is not due to the inherent bad behaviour of children with SEN, rather it is largely due to the lack of provision being made for those children. Across the country there are some truly fantastic schools doing a wonderful job, but there is no way that we can claim that children with special educational needs are being provided for with any consistency.
	There are two major problems: first, the complete lack of clarity on inclusion; and, secondly, the statementing process. Inclusion poses one of the great educational quandaries of this century. The number of children with SEN rises year on year. This situation will not disappear. School admissions policies are being confused due to the provisions of the SEND Act 2001. Under that Act, school governors and teachers,
	"may be at risk of prosecution if they refuse a school place to children with special educational needs, even if the school does not have sufficient resources to provide an appropriate curriculum",
	according to the Cambridge University paper, The Cost of Inclusion.
	There is a clear confusion here between existing legislation and the government policy outlined by the Minister the week before last, where we learnt that the Government have a child-centred policy on SEN. LEAs across the country are under the impression that they are under a duty to enact inclusion in a structural sense by pushing children into the mainstream. Those authorities could be said to have mistaken the concept of inclusion for a structural duty rather than the substantive principle that I take it to mean. For by inclusion we must mean the real day to day inclusion of a child in everything occurring at the school. We cannot mean the mere physical inclusion of a child in the classroom. There is far more in question and far more to the equation than that. Amendment No. 164 would ensure that parents are given the appropriate advice about all SEN options open to them. It would provide an interim measure for parents in a thoroughly confusing system.
	The next consideration must be for the effective inclusion of those children without special needs. Amendment No. 254 makes no assumption about where a child should go. It does, however, state clearly that children without a statement should ordinarily be placed in a mainstream school. I emphasise that this amendment is tabled in a constructive spirit. We on these Benches, and in the Conservative Party as a whole, have been thinking very seriously about the SEN issue. We have a special needs commission looking into potential solutions for improving statementing, and for somehow separating the allocation of statements from the allocation of resources without having to give any one body unfettered powers to make financial grants. Subsection (3) of the amendment states—along the lines of my party's SEN interim report published on 29 November last year—that a national funding agency would allocate funds to statemented children on one of a spectrum of categories. A statementing system should not vary from local authority to local authority. Subsections (4) and (5) take into account the wishes of the parent, and subsection (6) confirms the involvement in SEN provision of CTCs and academies.
	Amendment No. 255 would replace a provision left removed by this Government from the 1996 Act for reasons that have never been clear to me. This is not a statement of policy; I merely hope that the Minister will take an active part in this debate and perhaps give us an idea of the Government's plans for SEN in the next few years. There is clearly much more work to be done. Today I hope to achieve not a statement of a new policy on SEN but a commitment from the Minister to reconsider the problem of SEN.
	This is a complex issue about which we are thinking hard. I leave the Committee with the following thoughts. The Priory Education Services representation to the Education and Skills Select Committee of 21 June had a pragmatic and commendable approach to SEN students. It says:
	"It is not enough for us to describe ourselves as 'good' and excuse the lack of measurable outcomes because 'our students do not have the ability to pass exams or achieve other externally verified results'. We must live in the real world, where education standards do matter and will influence the young person's subsequent life and achievements".
	That is right. These children must be given the chance to flourish, to participate in and contribute to the real world. I beg to move.

Lord Dearing: I wish to speak to my Amendment No. 179, which follows on from the noble Baroness's amendments. My amendment about special educational needs has two parts. The first part would provide that those who take decisions on whether children should be statemented, and to what extent, should be separate from those who provide the funding. The noble Baroness argued that point, which is consistent with the Conservative Party report to which she referred. I came to that conclusion from experience, knowing what a problem it has been for local education authorities to provide the necessary funding. This has led to a rearguard action on the part of local authorities sometimes to resist legitimate cases because they just do not the money, as they see it. Antagonistic, confrontational and adversarial relationships can develop between parents and a local authority. That must be wrong. The Government's increase in funding for special educational needs has been a material help, but immediately after the Commons Select Committee reported the Minister said what the Government's attitude was. Another person spoke about the difficulty that she had had in getting a child statemented. These amendments were tabled before the Commons Select Committee reported, but I note that that Select Committee recommended:
	"There is an inbuilt conflict of interest in that it is the duty of the local authority to assess the needs of the child and to arrange provision to meet those needs and all within limited resources. The link must be broken between assessment and funding of provision",
	which is what my amendment is about.
	I describe the second part of the amendment as the Velcro part of the amendment. It would provide that children with a statement of special educational needs should be allocated funding on an individual basis, and that it should go with them wherever they go. It is their statement and their resources. In proposing that, I had two objectives: first, that a child with a statement is welcomed rather than seen as a burden because the funding to support that child is made available; and, secondly, to ensure—in saying this I am conscious that schools are honourable places—that the money allocated to that child with special needs is spent on them.
	In making that point, I note that Ofsted, in its evidence to the Select Committee, said that there was evidence that some delegated funding for schools was not being spent on special educational needs. I further note that the Minister, in his evidence, said that it was,
	"crucial to see that money intended for SEN is spent on SEN".
	The Select Committee recommended:
	"The fundamental problems in the statementing process that prevent funding from following the child should be resolved as a matter of urgency".
	The Velcro-ing of the statement to the child is particularly helpful if the child moves between local authorities and if it is to the child's advantage to spend part of his time in one school and another part in another school or in a pupil referral unit. It enables parents who feel that a school is not serving their child well to secure their transfer to another school without that school having qualms about whether the funding is available. I do not expect the Minister to agree to those two amendments right away, but I hope that he will accept that these are the kind of changes that have the strong support of the Select Committee and other quarters of the House.

Lord Lucas: I would like to hear the Minister state that he recognises that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is the way forward. That would provide consensus around this House and we could proceed in a considered way over the next few years to work out all the complications and complexities that go with that.
	The principle that the decision whether to issue a statement should be separated from the person providing the money, and ideally that both functions should be separated from the local education authority, goes well with the Government's ambition that a local education authority should be seen as supportive of parents, as their friend, aide and a source of advice to them. So many other things that the Government are doing are moving in that direction, such as school advice, which we have just discussed. So much that the Government are doing enables local authorities to help parents, but this one little island remains where local authorities are in many cases set in direct conflict with parents.
	A system has evolved whereby parental choice is becoming restricted due to command decisions taken by local education authorities. They are not all the same; there is immense variation between LEAs, so individual parents who are not mobile between LEAs have an extremely restricted choice. Inclusion policies can vary between no favouritism for inclusion to a determination that all children should be included, making it difficult for parents to choose special schools if that is what they want.
	There is an extraordinary difference in attitudes to statementing. There are variations ranging from about 1 per cent in Nottinghamshire to 7 per cent in Camden. It is inconceivable that that reflects an underlying trend in the children. In fact, it is extremely well known, particularly in the case of Nottinghamshire, that that is due to a determination not to issue statements, and that if you happen to live in Nottinghamshire you have an extremely difficult time obtaining a statement of special educational needs. Well, fine. But that is not the national policy and it restricts enormously parental choice.
	Local education authorities perform very differently in relation to children with special educational needs in their care. I have investigated the issue of value added in primary schools. There is enormous variation between the best authority, which in 2005 was Windsor and Maidenhead, to the worst, Slough, across the river. That variation is related not to deprivation or ethnicity—at least, not as far as I can establish from the DfES data—but, as one learns from talking to the LEAs, to the degree of support that they give their schools.
	Those lucky enough to teach at a school in Windsor and Maidenhead are given a great deal of training as soon as they enter a school on how to deal with SEN children. As soon as a child in such a school shows characteristics that teachers feel are a bit beyond their experience and abilities to deal with, the local education authority will send in a help squad, which arrives the next day. There is immense support from that LEA for children with special educational needs, and that really shows in results. It is the only authority in England where children in primary schools with special educational needs have value added at the same level as children who do not have those needs.
	That points to another problem resulting from such widespread underperformance. It probably relates to a combination of factors: children are let drift for a while; schools are not as crisp as they should be on picking up the problem; when they do, the support is not there; and there is no training in many schools—that was recognised by the Cambridge study and the committee in another place. All sorts of factors inherent in schools and very much related to the LEA they happen to be in, because of the nature of its support services, affect how a child is treated.
	Under those circumstances, it is imperative that we move local education authorities from their preoccupation with saving money to a preoccupation with helping parents and children. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, points the way forward in both respects. It is essential under that sort of system to have transferability of funding. That is the only way of getting reasonable parental control over whether you go for a special school, whether you bring that money into a mainstream school—as fully included or as part of a unit—and whether units develop. The Minister hymned the virtues of units within mainstream schools. I completely agree with him, but at least one local education authority—Cheshire—is abolishing all its units. Viz, fiat! Why is it able to do that? It can do it because parents have no choice. A parent cannot say, "I want a school with a unit. Therefore, I will go to this, that or the other wonderful unit". There is currently some extremely good unit provision in Cheshire.
	Parents have no choice; they cannot select that option. The funding stream remains within the control of the local education authority, which can say, "You can go there but the funds will not follow you". That degree of control by local education authorities, which enables them to impose blanket policies and removes choice from parents across the totality of their schools, again, goes fundamentally against many things that this Government are trying to do. We should move the choice to the child, his advisers and his parents. If the first part of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is accepted, with a local education authority being on side, I think that we will move to a much more constructive situation.
	My own amendment in this group merely says that schools should publish proper information about their facilities for children with special educational needs. At the moment, they are frightened of the law. The law says that they have to be totally inclusive, so, if asked, everyone says that they can do everything, but that is by absolutely no means the case. There are schools that are wonderful and know what they are talking about and there are schools that simply have not made it. That information should be available to parents. The basic information can be put in ways that are unarguable. How well trained are staff? What experience has the school had of dealing with pupils who have, say, ADHD? What forms of screening does the school operate to pick up problems? Those are establishable facts that can be published in prospectuses and can enable parents with savvy—a remarkable number of parents of children with SEN are savvy; it does not depend in any way on their background—or their advisers to pick up the signals that they need to know which schools are likely to suit their children.

Lord Lucas: I entirely support what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said about timescale. Clearly, as the Minister said, to move in the direction of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is a major change and takes a lot of consideration. There is no reason why this should be done with any hurry, particularly if we are doing so with consensus. We all agree that it is something we want to get right rather than having some politically competitive imperative to get it done before the next set of elections. I still think that it is the right way to move.
	The Minister asked whether the quango would have to have a budget, whether the rationing would be done by the quango and whether that was right. I do not expect some locally elected representative to have a part in the decision of whether I need a knee replacement, and I cannot see the decision on whether my child needs support for his special educational needs as anything different. It is an assessment of somebody's need. The provision of that need should be completely outwith local politics. Exactly how the quango sat with all the bits of apparatus from the NHS to social services to everything else like that is something we should have a long and constructive discussion on. The purpose of this, as much as anything else, would be to make sure that other means of dealing with the problems were incentivised at the same time as the purely in-school one of dealing with the problems at that end.
	There are a lot of things to think about, but this is a very positive way to move forward. Obviously there is a budget. Whether someone with standard-grade dyslexia gets £1,000 or £2,000 a year is something that can be dealt with in the context of that budget. You can produce incentives in the budget so that if the child goes to a residential school he gets X and if he goes to a day school he gets X minus something, but part of the saving is going to the mainstream school to make that child and that bit of the decision more attractive. You can incentivise decisions which are sensible.
	I am sure that the independent sector will respond by providing, as it does with the care of the elderly, care at the level of funding which will be available from the state. I do not see that as a problem and I see the fundamental question of whether the decision should be taken in some way by elected representatives or by experts to be a no-brainer. That decision of whether there is a need and of how much it should be funded should be an expert decision. I agree that when we come to local provision—which school and what pattern of provision—the LEA should have an influence but, under the pattern that the Minister has advocated, of the LEA and the parent working together as friends and partners to provide for the child, the pattern should evolve in response to decisions taken by that partnership, not be imposed by local authority fiat. Yes, that would come out differently.
	The Minister says, and I have no reason to think that he is wrong, that Nottinghamshire has wonderful provision in its mainstream schools, so everyone chooses that. If so, that would stay. I see no difficulty in differences evolving in response, especially to parentally influenced decisions as to what provision they want. That seems entirely right. To agree that the pattern of provision should be the subject of local authority fiat goes against everything that the Minister has been saying about other aspects of education being responsive to parental wishes and provision changing to meet wishes of children and parents. There is a great deal to be said for looking seriously at the direction proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing.

Baroness Buscombe: This has been a good debate, which has confirmed what I said at the outset, which is that there is a need for a proper review of special needs education. That is something that could emanate from your Lordships' House as the level of debate, knowledge, experience and concern on the issue speaks volumes in what has been said both today and in previous debates on the Bill.
	I do not want to detain the Committee but, briefly, I entirely concur with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. As I said, there is a real problem with regard to statementing and funding and, somehow, we need to separate that process. As he said, this is a complex issue. I accept what the Minister said about the law stating that there should be a choice between special needs schools and mainstream schools but in fact, because of issues, especially funding, a different thing seems to be happening on the ground. There is real inconsistency across the country among LEAs. That is a strong impression, which is confirmed from our experience from talking to people directly affected. That does not merely affect parents who are unable or find it difficult to read. For parents there are hugely confrontational moments with local authorities. That is agony for all parents. This is an extremely difficult area and one in which the problems are manifest among more and more young children—ironically, as the noble Lord has attested, because of medical advances. This is not something that will go away; it is something that we must sort out for the future chances of all those children.
	For now, I will take away what the Minister said about our amendments, read it in Hansard and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: As the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, rightly said, we debated at considerable length a somewhat similar amendment to the Education Act 2002. Indeed, I believe that we secured promises from the then Minister. One thing I have failed to do is to follow up on those promises to see how far they have been met. We on these Benches sympathise very much with the amendment, and we must think about coming back on Report with something similar.
	In 2002, we looked at the number of pieces of paper generated by the regulations that were issued. Increasingly in the past few years, regulations are issued not in pieces of paper but electronically and, from my experience as a school governor of a relatively small primary school, I must say that the amount of regulation that is required and that comes across electronically to that school from the department is pretty horrific. A real effort needs to be made to limit the amount of regulation that is issued and to return to a time when we trusted the professionalism of our teachers and particularly our head teachers. We are now training our head teachers much better, and we really need to trust them more and to give them the discretion to be able to make their own judgments on a number of issues.

Lord Adonis: I am completely with the noble Baroness in spirit. She referred to the "assault"—perhaps I may put it that way—on bureaucracy for which the late Lady Blatch was renowned. The amendments that she moved in respect of the previous Education Bill became Section 38 of the Education Act 2002, which imposed on the Secretary of State a duty to have regard to the desirability of avoiding sending excessive materials and imposing excessive administrative burdens on schools. We are very mindful of that. A good deal of attention is given to the sending out of materials to schools. The Permanent Secretary is required to take a personal interest and there is a committee which all publications going to schools have to go through in the department before they are allowed to be issued. That has had the effect of reducing the number of pages.
	Some years ago we took a decision that we would move towards an electronic-based system of communication with schools. That is almost entirely complete and very little paper is sent to schools. I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said. Having it all coming electronically does not necessarily mean that it is less burdensome than when it appears in envelopes. But we are taking that seriously too.
	The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, referred to one of the big changes that we have made recently. The new inspection framework will have the effect of reducing by nearly 50 per cent the inspection burden on schools. We undertook that review of inspection precisely to address what was perceived as being—in many cases it was—one of the most onerous burdens on schools; namely, the weight of inspection. We took the view that after two complete inspection rounds had been undertaken with the creation of Ofsted, there was no need to have the same extremely burdensome process of inspection in place. We moved instead to a system on which inspection is in inverse proportion to success. Most schools now get a very short inspection. It is only where the inspection of schools gives rise to serious concerns that there is a more elaborate process of inspection.
	We intend to begin a new programme of work in the autumn to tackle bureaucracy by focussing our efforts in those areas of regulation which our front line colleagues in schools and colleges tell us are the most burdensome. We will assess the costs, in time and money, of fulfilling the administrative obligations of the most burdensome regulations. We will set ourselves targets for reducing those costs. We will publish those targets and our progress against them in an annual simplification plan, which will also include details of all our initiatives to simplify the regulatory landscape and reduce the burden of bureaucracy on front line stakeholders. I hope that that will give some comfort to the noble Baroness.
	Finally, I looked at the 117 boxes. I would be happy to go through this with the noble Baroness, but each box relates clearly to the objectives of the early years foundation stage. Having looked at them with our professional staff, I could not honestly say that any of them were superfluous. I am happy to give them to the noble Baroness to look at. If she has any particular suggestions of those that she would like to drop, I will discuss that with her further.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: On behalf of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, I rise to move Amendment No. 184C. The Bill proposes to place a duty on local authorities to promote high standards and to fulfil the educational potential of every child, but what it does not do is bring academies within the scope of local authorities for intervention, support and challenge. The result is that a local authority will have a duty to do something, but will have no power to do it. That is a position which local authorities find pretty worrying. It means in addition that a significant number of children attending academies, many of which are in deprived areas, could be beyond the assistance of councils if the school runs into problems. As the number of academies grows, it is becoming clear that they are not immune to failure and that we are seeing the same wide range of performance among those schools as we do among local authority maintained schools. Recent research from Edinburgh University has shown that academies have failed to improve results compared with the comprehensives they replaced. Indeed, in May last year Ofsted placed the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough under special measures and since then has expressed concerns about a number of other academies.
	This is not an anti-academy amendment, it seeks simply to ensure that councils have the power to intervene and thus ensure that academies are provided with the same sort of support when they are failing as would be available to a school maintained by the local education authority. Indeed, the well-being and educational potential of children demand that these schools should have some protection and help. A similar issue arises with regard to the duty placed on local authorities by the provisions of the Children Act and the outcomes required by Every Child Matters. Local authorities now have a duty to develop and promote children and young persons' plans, but all those children attending academies are in effect beyond the scope of that, which is causing a great deal of concern.
	I hope that the Minister can do something to allay my fears on this issue and, more important, those expressed by local authorities who after all under a statutory duty to provide these services. I beg to move.

Baroness Buscombe: I rise to speak to Amendment No. 185 in this group which seeks to remove paragraph (c) of Clause 53(3). The subsection states that the standards of performance of pupils at a school are low if they are low by reference to,
	"(c) the standards attained by pupils at comparable schools".
	I state at the outset that this is a probing amendment. I do not contest the claim that if pupils were performing poorly compared to pupils at comparable schools, this would be a clear cause for concern. I would, however, appreciate it if the Minister could expand slightly on what is meant by "comparable".
	There are a variety of factors by which a school could be compared. The most obvious of these is the prior attainment of pupils in the school which forms the basis for the value added measure. In addition to prior attainment, one could imagine a number of other factors such as ethnic minority background and the family income. In certain circumstances, there is no reason why each of these factors might not be considered an appropriate measure of comparability.
	However, there is a danger here that we risk perpetuating low expectations for certain groups. For example, the new contextual value added measure that the Government intend to use in future discriminates against some ethnic groups by insisting on higher levels of achievement from these groups to obtain the same value added score. Similarly, there are schools in deprived areas which achieve very good contextual value added results while disguising extremely low levels of absolute achievement. For example, the Times Educational Supplement for 9 June reported that in the fourth best school in the country, according to the contextual value added measure used by Ofsted, only 12 per cent of pupils achieved A* to C in English,13 per cent in maths and none in science. Of the top 20 schools in the contextual value added ratings, 11 had fewer than one-third of pupils achieving five Cs or better, including English and maths.
	Meanwhile, head teachers in prosperous areas can receive below average value-added scores simply because their pupils come from a more affluent background. If one measure of comparability can lead to such wide ranges of absolute attainment, it means that the Government will need to be very explicit about which factors are considered comparable and which are not. It is also very important that the choice of a factor by which the authority gauges comparability does not inadvertently discriminate or imply that the expectations of performance for one group are somehow lower than the other.

Lord Dearing: We seem to touch again and again on academies. I warmly support for the whole academy initiative; I believe it is a brave one and that in our areas of greatest need, we should be prepared to be bold and put resources into new initiatives. But there is a concern about the extent to which they should be separate from other schools, perhaps when it comes to poor performance.
	My reading is that the academies are going to the areas where schools have failed and where the difficulties of success on behalf of the children are greatest. One must be prepared to accept that it will take time to pull those schools around. But if, after I do not know how many years, it is not working, then in the interests of the children and the community, that school should close, and the £2 million put in by the sponsors repaid if need be. Whatever the circumstances, we must put the interests of the children first.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: In moving Amendment No. 185F, I shall speak also to AmendmentNos. 185G, 187C, 188A and 188B. Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G both relate to Clause 56, which is about local authorities intervening to inject some life into coasting schools. The draft guidance that has been sent out to chief education officers or directors of children's services said of the clause:
	"In effect clause 50 [now clause 56] provides a spectrum of intervention within one power—so it could be used differentially by authorities, depending on the school's specific needs, where the governing body of the school are resistant to outside support. For example, it may be particularly helpful for a 'coasting' school to receive mentoring or similar support from a quality-assured external consultant or consultant head, whereas federation options will be more appropriate for schools in special measures".
	Clause 56 offers a range of different possibilities. Both Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G are probing amendments.
	Amendment No. 185F asks how far the old model of a local education authority adviser working with a school to help move it forward is still on the cards. Or is it now assumed that these services will be boughtin, often fairly expensively, from organisations such as W S Atkins or Vosper Thorneycroft, even though one might not think that those organisations gave education advice? However, they have both diversified into this area of service provision. The amendment refers to an employee of a local education authority. If a local head acts as an external adviser, that head is employed by the local education authority if he or she is head of a community school. But traditionally a group of people employed by local education authorities have helped schools in special measures. How far is that model to be moved on completely, or is there still some role here for local education authorities to retain within their ranks people who can be used as schools advisers?
	Amendment No. 185G suggests that where a local authority makes such proposals it should consult, in addition to those named in Clause 56(2), the head and staff of the school concerned and the head and the governing body of any school or college that it is pushing into a collaborative arrangement. It is probable that the Minister will tell me that this is envisaged, because it seems fairly obvious that if you are going to suggest, for example, that a school should collaborate with another school, you should have discussed it with the heads of both the schools involved before you announce the measures. They are not mentioned as people who should be consulted. Amendment No. 185G is really a probing amendment to see whether that is assumed. I confess that I had not looked at the detailed guidance, and it is possible that it is subsumed in the guidance.
	On Amendments Nos. 187C and 188A, we go forward to Clause 60, which concerns the Secretary of State intervening to make additional appointments to the board of governors. The effect of the amendments is to suggest that before doing so the Secretary of State should consult the local education authority and the governing board of the school as well as, in the case of Church or foundation schools, the diocesan board or the foundation governors. Again, if the Secretary of State makes such a move it would seem sensible and practical for him to consult these two sets of people.
	Amendment No. 188B seeks to deletesubsection (4). Subsection (4) enables the Secretary of State to pay anyone who he appointed as a governor when he intervened to place someone on the board of governors. The amendment is probing because traditionally governors are unpaid volunteers who give a great deal of time to a local school out of good will. Do we really want to start introducing payments for governors? Might that not create an unfortunate precedent? I beg to move.

Lord Adonis: In response to the points made on Amendments Nos. 187C and 188, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we wish to consider this matter further. The noble Baroness seeks to extend the consultation requirements when the Secretary of State appoints additional governors to a school causing concern to include the foundation, when there is a foundation attached to a school, and the local authority. It would be good practice for the Secretary of State to do both, in any event. Indeed, when we appoint additional governors, we consult the relevant local authority as a matter of course. But I will consider further before Report stage whether we should be explicit about this in the Bill.
	Similarly, Amendment No. 185F seeks explicitly to state that a local authority employee is among the partners with whom the local authority may require a school to enter into arrangements. I am glad to say that this is covered by existing law and the Bill. Local authorities are automatically able to offer support to a failing school under existing law. Furthermore, the Bill as drafted does not rule out a local authority employee from acting as the partner. That would precisely include the categories raised by the noble Baroness, such as the head teacher of a community school who would be employed by the local authority. He would be the type of person who might well, in some circumstances, be a partner with whom a local authority would wish a school facing serious difficulties to work.
	Amendment No. 185G seeks to increase the list of persons that the local authority must consult before requiring a failing school to enter into arrangements. We support the principle of appropriate consultation and will ensure that this is promoted through the statutory guidance that will accompany Part 4 of the Bill. However, we do not believe that the parties referred to in this amendment need explicitly to be added to the statutory list of consultees. Those at the school will already be consulted via the governing body. Those at the partner institution with whom it is proposed that the school should work will have to be consulted in order to secure their agreement to act as a partner in the first place, since there is no power in the Bill to require a stronger school or college to partner a weaker school. We certainly do not intend that the first that they should hear about it is by the content of a warning notice, a statement by a local authority or the Secretary of State.
	Amendments Nos. 186, 187 188 and 189, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, seek to secure parity between voluntary aided schools and foundation schools in relation to the appointing authority's rights in the event that the local authority or the Secretary of State appoint additional governors. We do not support that, because the purpose of the intervention in the first place in such cases might well be to counter the mismanagement of the school by the foundation in question. These powers are for use only in extremis and would need to follow a proper statutory process before being used.
	We are talking only about extreme interventions in the case of a manifest failure by a school where the governing body is itself judged by either the local authority or the Secretary of State to be wholly or in part the problem. That judgment would need to be based on inspection and other evidence.
	The noble Baroness is quite right to say that that leaves voluntary aided schools, where there are consultation rights, in a slightly different position. I can say only that we recognise the inconstancy. The reason for that is the unique historical position of voluntary aided schools. This includes, in particular, the need to ensure that the schools are conducted in accordance with their ancient trust deeds. However, in our experience of such situations, we have never found the relevant diocesan authorities, whether they are Anglican or Roman Catholic, slow to respond to the need for change. The inconsistency is due to their historical situation.
	I have addressed Amendments Nos. 187C and 188A. Amendment No. 188B concerns payment by the Secretary of State following the appointment of an additional governor. That is an existing power, which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been used. However, we think that there may be circumstances where the receipt of a modest sum—perhaps to cover travel expenses—could make the difference between a potential additional governor being prepared to act or not being prepared to act, particularly at very short notice, which could be the case if a school were in a category of concern requiring urgent action. Therefore, although the power has never been used, we prefer to have it rather than not have it, if the noble Baroness does not mind.

Baroness Massey of Darwen: I move this amendment on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lady Gould, who apologises to the Committee as she has had to go to a ministerial meeting. Quite simply, the amendment would make personal, social and health education a statutory part of the school curriculum. I support that very strongly, as do many organisations which are concerned with children and young people. I shall give reasons for my support.
	I used to teach personal, social and health education in a London comprehensive school and I was the director of the Young People's Programme at the Health Education Authority. While I was in that post, we sponsored many programmes of PSHE, as it is now called, and the evaluations of those programmes were very interesting.
	Some years ago, one programme showed that good personal, social and health education in schools could cut down truancy and improve relationships and school ethos. More recently, the school where I am a governor has a strong programme of PSHE and is consistently praised by inspectors and visitors for its good behaviour and positive ethos. In addition, that ethos and good behaviour and the building of self-confidence in children have resulted, undoubtedly, in higher academic performance over the years. Perhaps not surprisingly, many children need to feel secure and valued before they can learn and perform. Sadly, that does not always happen in the home.
	PSHE should be statutory in all schools. Without a statutory status it will not be given priority. No one will co-ordinate it and there will be no training and little support, unless the head teacher or a senior member of staff is an enthusiast. My noble friend would have given compelling reasons for it to be statutory. Let me refer briefly to a document on which I have been working for the QCA with a former colleague. In the document, we point out that there is guidance and that every school will have healthy school status by 2009, but that without support and co-ordination, that will not be adequate. The national curriculum states that schools are required,
	"to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and toachieve",
	and to,
	"promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life".
	I think that is a good description of personal, social and health education. Personal, social and health education supports those experiences and also helps to deliver the five outcomes in Every Child Matters, which I shall not go into again today.
	Citizenship is recognised as a statutory curriculum subject and legislation is uneven as there is overlap between citizenship and personal, social and health education, although there are also distinct elements. In the QCA paper, my colleague and I give the example of nutrition being part of personal, social and health education, but nutrition is also a political—with a small "p"—issue. The emotional and social skills learnt as part of PSHE are needed in active citizenship, be it school council work, peer interaction or participating in community life.
	Both citizenship and personal, social and health education do not have the quality of teachingthat they merit. The teaching of those subjects requires appropriate methods, good planning and good co-ordination, just like any other subject in the curriculum. The skills learned in those areas are vital. The UK Nokia marketing manager said at a recent conference:
	"We look beyond the CV and academic qualifications. We look for self-confidence, the ability to set and achieve goals, problem solve and work with others. Employers need flexible, adaptive and emotionally intelligent employees".
	Personal, social and health education encourages self-discipline, the ability to work with others, self-confidence and informed decision making, which are surely all qualities that we would want all young people to have. I hope that we shall have some movement on that from the Government. I look forward to the Minister's reply. I beg to move.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I speak to Amendment No. 193A in my name, and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley; and support the other amendments in our names in this group.
	I reiterate the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that it is important that we take personal, social and health education seriously, and that young people in our schools are given the opportunity to explore these subjects in a serious and grown-up way. Parents very often shy away from talking with their children about sex education. It is therefore important that children should have a chance to have serious discussions about these issues in the context of school.
	Amendment No. 193A relates to Clause 67(4) which deals with foundation subjects for key stage 4: information, communications technology, physical education and citizenship. My noble friend Lady Walmsley is particularly concerned that schools should take account of cultural, religious or health considerations but that those issues should not be used as excuses for excluding children from those subjects. It is important that children get a full, rounded education in key stage 4 and that they should not be able to escape citizenship education or from physical education because they say that for cultural reasons they cannot strip down. It is always possible for schools to take account of the clothing that is required for cultural reasons and make sure that children get physical education.

Lord Adonis: I acknowledge the immense contributions that my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould have made to the cause of personal, social and health education. They are acknowledged leaders in the field.
	We see this as an increasingly important area in the life of schools as they play their part in society and confront the social pressures with which we are all too familiar, including those referred to by the noble Earl. The issue of whether PSHE should be made compulsory is complex, which is why we cannot straightforwardly make it statutory. Many aspects of PSHE are already statutory elements of the national curriculum, such as sex and relationship education, drug education and careers guidance. In addition, a number of requirements on schools support PSHE, such as the need for policies on bullying, promoting effective race relations and child protection. A non-statutory framework for all the key stages that encompasses the whole of PSHE was introduced in 2000, so it is still fairly recent. Over and above that, there is the National Healthy Schools programme, with which my noble friend Lady Massey is familiar and which she sees as an important part of the development of effective provision in this area.
	The first requirement for getting healthy school status is that an effective PSHE programme, including sex and relationship education and drug education—including alcohol, tobacco and volatile substance abuse—is properly provided in the school. The programme states that a healthy school uses,
	"the PSHE framework to deliver a planned programme of PSHE, in line with DfES/Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) guidance",
	has,
	"a named member of staff responsible for PSHE provision with status, training and appropriate senior management support within the school",
	and,
	"involves professionals from appropriate external agencies to create specialist teams to support PSHE delivery and to improve skills and knowledge, such as a school nurse—
	we have a target for all schools or clusters of schools to have a school nurse by 2010—
	"sexual health outreach workers and drug education advisers".
	We are on track to reach the target that, by the end of 2006, half of all schools should be healthy schools. More than 78 per cent of schools are engaged in the Healthy Schools programme. That is supported by increased provision of £12.3 million a year. The PSHE certificate programme, which my noble friend is aware of and which is doing good work in this area, provides free training, including the cost of staff cover in schools from which the teachers come.
	Since the certification programme was introduced 2,500 PSHE teachers have been trained, and another 2,000 are enrolled on the programme. The cost of funding is £3 million per year. I say all this as evidence of the seriousness with which we treat PSHE. If, however, we moved to the stage my noble friend was suggesting of making PSHE compulsory, we would immediately, as she will recognise, get into a debate about the imposition of new burdens on school and precisely how they are to be defined. We both want to achieve the same result of universal healthy school status on the back of the existing statutory requirements in place on schools, which are substantial, the training of substantially more PSHE teachers school by school and the observance of a non-statutory framework. I believe we will reach the same position by a process of consent without another major reform of the national curriculum, with all the additional burdens that that will be seen to bring in in its wake.
	This is not a straightforward issue. We share entirely the objectives of my noble friend. We have a large number of measures in place that we believe will achieve those objectives. In that context we would not adopt this precise amendment.
	I will now comment on Amendments Nos. 193A and 197, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, which require schools to take account of and provide for any relevant cultural, religious, secular and health considerations for pupils who follow the proposed programmes of study for PSHE. These amendments are not necessary because schools are expected to provide a curriculum which promotes pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural developments. The national curriculum includes a statutory inclusion statement which outlines the principles that teachers should follow to ensure that every child, irrespective of ability, sex, social and cultural background, ethnicity or disability, has the opportunity to achieve to the best of his ability.
	I entirely share the objectives which the noble Baroness has set out, but we believe that they are met already.

Baroness Buscombe: I speak to a large group of amendments on what we believe to be one of the most important aspects of the Bill. I hope that the Committee will bear with me, as I have quite a lot to say. I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 194 to 196, relating to science options at GCSE level, to Amendments Nos. 198 and 205A, relating to opting into the IGCSE, Amendment No. 200, which would allow the study of both history and geography up to 16 and Amendment No. 204, which would widen the provision for modern languages, leading, thereon, to speaking to Amendment No. 192 which, I am pleased to see, is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams.
	Starting with sciences and IGCSE, the amendments seek to ensure that science is centred at the core of the curriculum, rather than being relegated through the consequences of neglect to a second rate of school subjects. There is real concern that the three sciences will be wiped from the curriculum as individual, academically rigorous subjects. If we fail to get that right, the future of the UK science industry in an increasingly competitive arena is in jeopardy.
	This is a Catch-22 problem. The rigorous study of science in our schools is as good as off the agenda. Currently, 480,000 students take the double award GCSE, compared to just 43,000 who take GCSEs in the three separate sciences. That is augmented by training provisions. The majority of PGCSE courses are focused on science, rather than on physics or chemistry. The report, Towards 2020 Science, produced by the 2020 Science Group established by Microsoft Research, recommends that we need to,
	"urgently rethink how we educate tomorrow's scientists".
	The amendments represent that urgent rethinking from these Benches.
	Amendment No. 194 introduces a simple entitlement to all pupils to study three separate sciences at GCSE. We are fully committed to achieving three sciences for all pupils. I am thrilled to see the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, is of the same opinion. Amendment No. 195 would establish an entitlement to study three science GCSEs to all pupils who achieve level 6 at key stage 3. Amendment No. 196, which is really a last resort amendment, would ensure that all specialist science schools would be compelled to provide three separate sciences to GCSE.
	I hope that the Minister will join the consensus on Amendment No. 194. However, I am sure that he will recognise the content of Amendment No. 195, as it replicates exactly the promises made in this year's Budget in the Science and Innovation Framework 2004-2014: the Next Steps. There, the Chancellor introduced a "package of measures". I cite those provisions directly. They promise,
	"an entitlement from 2008 for all pupils achieving at least level 6 at key stage 3 to study three separate science GCSEs ... to increase progression to, and attainment at, A level science".
	We welcome that, but studying the three separate sciences should ultimately be available to all key stage 4 pupils. The Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning supported our provision at Education Questions in another place, where he said that,
	"we propose to establish co-operation between schools, colleges and universities by 2008, so that every child who wishes to choose triple science will be able to do so".—[Official Report, Commons, 27/3/06; col. 701.]
	Yet there was some confusion in another place. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education and Skills, Phil Hope MP, said:
	"If the amendments were accepted and schools were forced to provide physics, chemistry and biology GCSEs to some or all of their pupils, there would be a real risk that schools might focus only on providing those three subjects and may not offer the science and additional science GCSEs which, as I have already said, are the more appropriate to the majority of pupils. Securing science for the science enthusiasts would be at the cost of eroding science provision for the majority".
	That is an appalling statement. He went on to say that the Government have made commitments to,
	"ensure that our ablest young science students have access to triple-science GCSEs. That includes pupils who achieve at least level 6 at key stage 3. The Government are also committed to ensuring that all specialist science schools will offer GCSEs for physics, chemistry and biology at least to all pupils who achieve level 6 at the end of key stage 3. That will be achieved by the end of September 2008".—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee E, 19/5/06; col. 772-3.]
	Can the Minister clarify the Government's exact position?
	Every year there seems to be a new review on the slipping status of science in our country: the Roberts review in 2002, the Science and Innovation Framework 2004-14, and the review of the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, of this year. We face nothing short of a crisis in the production of pure science graduates and scientists. Since 1985, 18,000 fewer students entered for physics A-level, and despite the fact that applications to study chemistry are rising at university, their translation into places is falling.
	The evidence submitted to your Lordships' Science and Technology Committee investigation into science teaching in schools made concerning reading. Evidence submitted by the National Science Learning Centre indicated that 25 per cent of 11 to 16 schools have no physics specialists at all; and of all secondary science teachers, 44 per cent are biologists, 25 chemists and just 19 per cent are physicists.
	Simply homogenising the three sciences into a single subject is absolutely not enough. We need to educate our young scientists now and encourage them to specialise in tough subjects after the age of 16. There are some absolutely critical science research agendas in the 21st century. We need to take this opportunity to effect real change now. I suspect that catching up in years to come will not be an option. We have the raw intellectual resources at our disposal in young future scientists sitting in classrooms throughout the country, but at present only 35.9 per cent of comprehensive schools offer physics GCSE compared with 78.4 per cent of independent schools.
	Entitlement to three sciences would not only improve British productivity and international competitiveness; it would go a long way to breaking the link between deprivation and failure that the Minister highlighted in his Second Reading speech. The disparity exists in other real substantive terms. Currently, only independent schools can opt into the IGCSE. The inclusion of at least the IGCSE as an entitlement opt-in for schools will offer academically inclined pupils solid preparation for further study.
	Amendment No. 198 would enable the introduction of the IGCSE by the International Baccalaureate Organisation and the Cambridge Pre-U—the recently launched invention of the Cambridge International organisations. The Pre-U is as yet untested. I have included it as it is designed by universities for entry into universities, a direction that the current A-level, made up of all modules and coursework, could learn from.
	Overall, this is a probing amendment. I am not sure whether my table would be allowed as it mentions non-statutory bodies. But the amendment sets out my intentions very clearly.
	IGCSE is the most popular international qualification for 14 to 16 year-olds. It is taken by more than 100,000 pupils in more than 100 countries. The headmaster of St Paul's School, Dr Martin Stephen, has scrapped British GCSEs in favour of the IGCSE. In his view the GCSE scores a mediocre midway between being a leaving certificate representing minimum competence and being a qualifier for higher education. He has also said, more damningly, that
	"you cannot sustain an A-level on these new GCSEs".
	Manchester Grammar School has dropped GCSE maths in favour of the IGCSE for the same reasons, its headmaster stating that GCSEs are not appropriate for the most able. The implications for our future economic productivity and the social well-being of those educated under those GCSEs are all clear in that statement.
	It is true that this is focusing on the top end of achievement, and that is rightly so and in line with the Government's White Paper which encourages,
	"more stretching lessons and opportunities for gifted and talented pupils".
	I suggest to the Minister that rather than offering the brightest pupils a few weeks in a summer academy to boost their learning, he should introduce this measure which will provide the challenges that the brightest pupils need day to day.
	There is a real opportunity here for the Government to deliver and provide pupils, in statute, with the challenging and rigorous curriculum that they deserve and that will equip them and benefit the country well into the 21st century. I hope that the Minister sees fit to make that substantive commitment to the future of standards in schools.
	I move on to history, geography and languages. Although there are obvious advantages in the entitlement to the study of three separate sciences and the huge benefits of the IGCSE, I should like to turn to the rest of the curriculum. As the Bill stands, the way in which subsection (2) of new Clause 85A is ordered means that while pupils can study either history or geography until age 16, they will not be entitled to study both. We believe that they should be. That is what Amendment No. 200 would achieve.
	The lumping together of history and geography into today's ever-expanding world is limiting. Gone are the days when geography was merely learning the names of capital cities or points on a map. Today's subject is a vibrant and challenging mixture of scientific fact-gathering, the analysis of statistics and the understanding of current affairs. It combines both empirical and conceptual studies and skills. Geography is an integrated study of the places, societies, environments and landscapes of the world as we know it. There is a crucial link between history and geography. A combination of the two unites the study of our physical geographical past, connected by analytical skills to our social and human past.
	History teaches us to use hindsight wisely. The patterns of history demonstrate where civilisations have succeeded, how our great institutions were formed, and how and why our rights were won. The study of history is a vital tonic in a culture where information is almost as of right, accessible at the click of a Google search or represented in the UN convention. The national curriculum divides history up into a pick-and-mix subject, leaving the real skill of the subject—the analysis of the events within a wider framework—floundering. The report of the National Curriculum History Working Group back in 1991, just a few years after the curriculum had been nationalised, recognised the importance of chronology, stating that it,
	"provides a mental framework or map which gives significance and coherence to the study of history".
	Although history is popular outside the classroom, as shown by the 80 per cent "history matters" rating from the National Trust recently, only 60 per cent of pupils take history up to 16. I wonder how many of those pupils would have continued if they had been entitled to study it alongside geography. That limitation is certainly a deterrent to the study of either subject, not only in the necessity of choosing one or the other but by the message that it sends out that history and geography are not as important as other subjects of core importance. I am saddened that citizenship is a core subject ahead of history, but I do not know where our sense of citizenship and national identity come from if not from our own historical actions and the actions of our forefathers throughout history. To deny that is to deny the principle of cause and effect, but that is not considered to be a vital part of our children's education.
	I am grateful to noble Lords for their patience. I am sure they will be pleased to hear that the end is in sight, but what I am saying is important. I had to make the choice between history and geography when I was 14, and I have always felt that my life and my sense of where I have come from has been compromised because of that. That is why I feel so passionately about this.
	Amendments Nos. 192 and 201 to 204 relate to the teaching of modern foreign languages. Amendment No. 192 would make modern foreign languages a compulsory subject for key stage 4. AmendmentNo. 204 would ensure that, where the Secretary of State specifies languages by order, the order must include Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. At present, modern foreign languages are part of the entitlement for key stage 4, but are in essence optional. Although all schools are expected to make them available to their pupils, there is no requirement that anyone takes them. Modern foreign languages were removed from the list of foundation subjects in 2003. Since then, there have been dramatic falls in the number of people studying languages at GCSE.
	The degree to which this occurred was demonstrated by the November 2005 language trends key stage 4 survey. The report found that 64 per cent of maintained schools had experienced a fall in the numbers taking modern foreign languages in the past three years. By contrast, numbers in the independent sector were more or less stagnant. Other statistics demonstrate that attitudes towards languages vary dramatically according to wealth and the part of the country in which people live. The lowest proportion of schools to offer modern languages as a compulsory subject were those that were academically underachieving or had pupils from poorer social backgrounds. Only 18 per cent of schools have compulsory languages in the north-west compared with 40 per cent in the south-east.
	This picture of decline is reinforced if we look at the numbers taking a foreign language at GCSE. In 2002, the Barcelona European Council called for the teaching of at least two foreign languages from a very early age. The ambition of the EU goes beyond this. The European Union has adopted an ambitious aim for its education and training policy to,
	"enable all Europeans to communicate in two languages in addition to their mother tongue".
	A survey this February by the European Commission found that two in three adults in Britain could not speak a language other than English. There is still a long way to go to meet this aspiration.
	Providing opportunities for language learning is also an international obligation under Article 2 of the European Cultural Convention, which states:
	"Each Contracting Party shall, insofar as may be possible:
	a. encourage the study by its own nationals of the languages, history and civilisation of the other Contracting Parties and grant facilities to those Parties to promote such studies in its territory; and b. endeavour to promote the study of its language or languages, history and civilisation in the territory of the other Contracting Parties and grant facilities to the nationals of those Parties to pursue such studies in its territory".The necessity of ensuring that children in England study a foreign language was demonstrated by the English Next report by the British Council. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, wrote in the foreword that the report,
	"should ... end any complacency among those who may believe that the global position of English is so unassailable that the young generations of the United Kingdom do not need additional language capabilities".
	The report suggests that in the future monoglot native English speakers will lose out to qualified bilingual—or probably multilingual—young people in the global jobs market. I think that that probably is already happening.
	The QCA has said that students are possibly reducing their future prospects of job mobility and choice by giving up language learning at the age of 14. A key recommendation of the English Next report was that schools should consider teaching languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. Our Amendment No. 204 would achieve that by ensuring that the Secretary of State includes those languages in any order specifying languages that may be taught. They represent the kinds of languages in which young people will need to be proficient in order to succeed. It will be a world in which China in particular will have ever-increasing prominence.
	Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, with estimates ranging from 800 million to 1.1 billion native speakers. Spanish is another prominent language with between 300 million and 330 million native speakers, which is approximately the same number as English speakers. Arabic is another major language, its major dialects being spoken by around 175 million people. It is vital that all those languages are offered in schools, subject to the choice of governing bodies.
	We have an opportunity to improve the standards and substance of our children's education—and that is not only through learning and retaining facts in the sciences and maths that will later translate into economic productivity. That is the empirical course. The facts and skills are inextricable and, taken up through the study of history and geography together, will equip our country with people who are educated well enough to encounter and tackle the complexities of this ever-changing world. I beg to move.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has given a comprehensive introduction to this group of important amendments. I for one would not express any resentment that she has spoken on this occasion at greater length than is usual in Committee. The group of amendments is astonishingly important, covering as it does virtually the whole of the curriculum issue, what should be foundation subjects, what should be optional subjects and matters of that kind.
	Because of reasons of time, and because my noble friend Lady Sharp will want to address these issues, I will keep my remarks related to only two of the amendments, while saying in passing that I very strongly agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has said about separate science. It is almost impossible to achieve high levels of attainment in science unless one takes the three subjects separately. Combined sciences have a rather limited level of achievement. Most children who do not take sciences separately will simply not qualify for scientific courses at university. They will in effect have to settle for lower levels of achievement.
	However, having said that, I shall briefly address two amendments in this large group. My name is associated with Amendment No. 192. I will not repeat the detailed and comprehensive set of statistics given by noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, except to agree with them and again draw the attention of the Committee to the very disturbing decline in language teaching, particularly in state schools. It has been quite dramatic since 2003 when languages ceased to be a foundation subject.
	Real international and economic factors arise here. Let me take a few examples. In Latin America few people except for a small elite speak languages other than Spanish or Portuguese, yet it is one of the major burgeoning markets of the world. It simply is not possible to trade in Brazil, Argentina or anywhere in central America without some knowledge of either Spanish or Portuguese as the case may be. Indeed, there has been recent experience of British businessmen who imagine that Brazilians speak Spanish—on the general theory that Latin America was a Spanish-speaking continent.
	Another example that springs to mind is that of China, where until very recently only a relatively small elite on the eastern fringe could speak English. The examples being set by our foreign competitors are quite staggering. The United States has just embarked on a major programme of teaching Chinese. Over the past couple of years, literally hundreds of high schools have decided to embark on teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and the programme has been extended widely across a range of young people in both junior high and high schools. They are taught in part by students studying at American universities who spend part of their time teaching Chinese. The United States has a bad record in foreign languages. Citizens learn very few and there is no compulsory foreign language teaching in most local schools, so it is striking that the US has seen the writing on the wall and is now moving rapidly towards recognising that both Chinese and Spanish are vital languages.
	In Florida, Spanish is now spoken by equivalent numbers to those speaking English, while a large and growing proportion of the southern United Statesis becoming Spanish-speaking. Indeed, Spanish is moving rapidly towards becoming the second language of the United States after English. Again, in substantial areas of the US, those who cannot speak Spanish will simply not be able to address large parts of the community, in some states moving rapidly towards half or more than half of the population.
	A third example picks up on the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, to Arabic. While there is not enough time to go into the argument in detail, it is significant to note that both in the United States and the United Kingdom, finding Arabic speakers who can assist in the business of building relations with the Muslim community has been extraordinarily difficult. There are so few Arabic speakers that one has to hunt around even to staff adequately the intelligence community, let alone moving beyond that to establish close relationships, as we desperately need to do, with Arabic-speaking parts of the world.
	We need desperately to revisit the issue of modern foreign language teaching and to consider whether, for our economic and international political future, it should not be given a much higher priority. On this I wholly agree with all that has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. It is vital to bring back the concept of learning foreign languages. Moreover, I speak with a certain amount of confidence on this matter because I recall that right back in the late 1970s there was a proposal for French to be introduced in primary school and a second modern foreign language in secondary school. Unfortunately it fell by the wayside in the following years.
	I want to speak only briefly to AmendmentNo. 199A because my noble friend Lady Sharp will probably go into greater detail. I shall address the important issue of enabling young people over the age of 14 to study vocational and academic subjects alongside one another. Bearing in mind the remarks made so brilliantly by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, about learning from our own history, I shall say this. Almost since the beginning of compulsory education in this country, the streams of academic and vocational education have been split at the point of the compulsory school-leaving age, which has created one of the biggest economic problems we face. We have not rated vocational activities, skills and achievements alongside academic ones, and there is endless proof of this. As apprenticeships have slowly been phased out—although I pay tribute to the efforts of the Government to bring in so-called modern apprenticeship schemes—a very large section of our population has simply been denied the ability to achieve the attainments of which it is capable.
	I believe that learning to put vocational and academic subjects together is a crucial element in establishing the significance, importance and status of vocational skills—and frankly, many young people are capable of both. One sees young men and women who are school-tired at the age of 15 suddenly begin to realise the importance of mathematics and English because they have spent some time in work experience or in the beginnings of an apprenticeship. It is quite striking how the motivation suddenly comes alive again and how the kind of young men and women about whom the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, is so very deeply concerned benefit from the combination of the two.
	The final point I wish to make on this issue, which I believe is the big unsolved problem of our education system, concerns the shockingly high levels in this country of young people leaving school when they have the earliest possible opportunity to do so. They are much worse than those of most other European countries. Incidentally, the age of 16 coincides with the period of adolescent rebellion, when people are most likely to say that they want to leave school and discover only later what a tragedy this is for their future and their families. Anything that we can do to knit together the continuation of education after the age of 16 in a way that enables young people to study together in tertiary colleges—or, if you like, in Tomlinson situations—is crucial if we are going to make a leap forward in this country.
	Everybody knows that we do well by the highly academic and have done so for many decades. The people we lose out on, the people we do not serve adequately, are those in the group one down from that: those who do not wish to go on to university but who have real capacity and real potential. Too often we write them off at the age at which they leave school and they do not attain the levels that our country, the economy and our educational system need.
	I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, has said about foreign languages and some of the other issues she has raised.

Lord Dearing: The Minister is showing signs of rising, but he would perhaps prefer to hear about all the amendments in the group first. I was so wrapped up the debate that I forgot about my own amendment, and I should like to come back to it, because it is important to me. It is not an amendment that I expect the Minister to accept. It says:
	"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient funds are made available for pupils work-related learning under this section".
	I am sure that the Minister will wish to say, "Of course, there is no need for that".
	I tabled the amendment because in Clause 67 the Government make explicit provision for work-related learning and spell out in a subsection what that means. They are serious about it. That fully reflects the comments of Ivan Lewis MP, former Minister for Skills and Vocational Education, who stated:
	"Work experience remains our single biggest co-ordinated engagement between the worlds of work and education. It's a vital bridge that provides many benefits in its own right for the pupil, the school, the employer, and gives young people meaningful insight into working life, allows them to make better informed career choices and helps them to overcome misconceptions about business. It should be a key vehicle in delivering plans for work related learning, enterprise education and vocational GCSEs".
	That fits entirely with the provisions of the Bill.
	I declare an interest as the patron of a body called Trident, which organises work experience for pupils. Trident and other such bodies engage some 300,000 employers—a vast number—and 400,000 pupils. I have been concerned that, in spite of the importance of work experience, the Learning and Skills Council has reduced funding for it over the past two years by some £10 million. As might be expected, this cannot be seen to foster the development of work-related learning or, via the foundation, the Government's ambition to introduce eight or nine vocational options post-14.
	It seems wrong that that provision should be contracted when there is such commitment and intention for further engagement. I note that over the next three years £60 million has been found for enterprise learning. That is not mentioned in the Bill as a requirement; work-related learning is. I am surprised that one is in and one is out and I very much hope that the Government can give an assurance that adequate funding for work-related experience will be made available and the need met. This matter needs attention now.

Lord Adonis: In her very impressive speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, raised a wide range of issues, and I shall do my best to cover as many of them as I can. However, perhaps I may stand back for just a moment. As the Minister responsible for the school curriculum, these issues are on my mind day in and day out. They involve some very difficult trade-offs, and perhaps I may bring out the nature of those trade-offs.
	I believe that one of the most difficult decisions that we took as a Government was to disapply the statutory requirement that pupils must continue to study a modern foreign language up to the age of 16. I emphasise to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that we did not withdraw modern languages from the curriculum—I can think of nothing more monstrous that a Government could do. We did something distinctly different: we no longer made it a statutory requirement that pupils should study languages at key stage 4. That was an immensely difficult decision to take and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, we did so in conjunction with a significant boost to primary languages. That has been successful—I have the figures, which I can give to the noble Baroness. There is a significant increase in language teaching in primary schools, and I hope that that may go some way to realising the ambitions that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, had back in the 1970s. It is a very sad state of affairs that in this country historically we did not start teaching languages until pupils had reached the age of 11.
	Why did we make that change at key stage 4? We did so for two reasons. First, we come back to the issue of bureaucracy. As anyone who visited the schools will know, a large number of pupils were seriously disengaged from the study of languages at key stage 4. For them, it was far more appropriate and in the interests of their employability, their engagement in school and so on that they should follow vocational programmes of study. Those were increasingly available but could not be timetabled properly with the other requirements.
	Before we made the change, it was necessary for schools to get each individual pupil disapplied by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. That was a massively bureaucratic process, even with administrators of the capacity of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. Expecting him and his officials to engage in that level of central prescription and bureaucratic form-filling had the effect of the burdens on schools which we debated earlier. The trade-off that we had to face was whether we were prepared to see schools enter fewer candidates for language GCSEs because we wanted to enlarge the options offered to pupils, particularly in the vocational areas of study, and to remove an extremely bureaucratic process. That was one of the most difficult trade-offs that we had to make.
	The other example of a trade-off is precisely that given by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, in response to the issue of the three sciences: whether the key stage 3 programme, which is currently a three-year programme of study for most people, should be reduced to two years. We have had a pilot of a two-year key stage 3, which is an attractive option for many schools. It is available to other schools; they can seek to teach key stage 3 in two years, which means that pupils go on to GCSE programmes at age 13 rather than 14.
	The geography and history communities are very strongly opposed to that move because history and geography are mandatory in key stage 3 but not in key stage 4. So other subject communities see the very benefit that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, seeks to achieve—having longer to teach the sciences, making it easier to teach the three individual sciences—as being at the expense of their own subject, which is no longer a statutory requirement. Those are the trade-offs that we have to face in this area, day in and day out. There is no easy answer to them. Almost all subject associations that enter my office want their subjects to be mandatory; they want a more substantial programme of study and they give me 15 very important reasons, connected with the national economy and the development of individuals, why that should be so. If we did them all, pupils would never get time to sleep, let alone to engage in the many other extracurricular activities such as sport in which we want them to participate. That puts the matter into context for the Committee and shows the trade-offs that we face.
	I am very mindful of Helmut Schmidt's famous remark on languages, which I think he made to a Labour Party conference. He said that they are delighted to sell to us in English but it would be good if at least sometimes they could buy from us in German. Perhaps he would now refer to Spanish—although maybe not in respect of Germany. That highlights the problem. In most countries in the world now, the foreign language that is taught is English.
	Part of our problem in focusing high-quality language teaching in our schools is deciding which language should be taught. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, mentioned Spanish. I am glad to say that Spanish teaching is increasing in our schools. The number of entries for GCSE Spanish has risen from 34,400 to 51,700 in the past nine years. There has been a big improvement in Spanish. Of course, traditionally, French has been the main foreign language taught in our schools, and it is still given primacy in PGCE courses and training.
	The trade-offs here are difficult, including that in respect of Mandarin, which the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, mentioned. We have not extended Mandarin into the entitlements, as she sought—or Arabic, which she also mentioned—precisely because we want to promote the official working languages of the European Union, which we regard as important in our wider European policy. Clearly there would be a benefit if we also taught those other languages, but it would be likely that in some schools no European language would be taught or given primacy. That is precisely the kind of trade-off we are talking about.
	Our policy on languages has been to introduce better interactive materials, such as the languages ladder. I sent the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, our interactive materials in Spanish, including the dance mat, which I think she has been performing on recently. We have been doing a good deal to improve the quality of language teaching in secondary schools, but the thrust of our policy has been the promotion of languages in primary schools, including, for the first time, training PGCE students in languages in primary schools and providing significant additional monetary support to primary schools for teaching languages. To reach our target, which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned, by 2010, all seven to 11 year-olds in key stage 2 will have the opportunity to learn a language at their primary school.
	By 2010, we will have funded 6,000 primary trainees to follow a teacher training course which also develops their language skills. There is evidence that this is bearing fruit. In 2002, only 21 per cent of schools were offering language programmes—most of them on an extracurricular basis, not even in the main school teaching time. A survey in January 2005 found that 56 per cent of all primary schools were either delivering language programmes or had plans to do so, so there has been a significant advance. That provides hope for the follow-through into secondary schools and up to GCSE.
	We had a recent debate about history, on a Motion by the noble Lord, Lord Luke, in which I gave a full account of what the Government were seeking to do. I refer noble Lords to that, rather than rehearsing everything now, except to say that, on quality of teaching, history is one of the most highly rated subjects by Ofsted. The uptake of history GCSE has remained good, at a consistent 31 to 32 per cent, despite the wider range of subjects offered at GCSE. History is in a strong state all the way through to GCSE.
	Geography is still the fourth most popular option at GCSE. It has, however, been in decline, which has been of concern to the geography community and the Government. That is why we are devoting £2 million over the next two years on a geography action plan which will do a good deal to improve the support for teachers and schools in the teaching of geography and boost the resources available to them.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, referred to the Budget announcement which set ambitious goals for improving science teaching at GCSE and A-level. It set goals to achieve year-on-year increases in the number of young people taking A-levels in physics, chemistry and mathematics, so that by 2014 entries to A-level physics should stand at 35,000, up from the current 24,000; in chemistry, 37,000 up from the current 33,000; and in mathematics, 56,000 up from 46,000. To take that forward, we have pledged that, by 2008, all secondary schools with a science specialism—now more than 200—will offer GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biology as well as the two general science GCSEs.
	I accept the noble Baroness's point that we should seek to move beyond that, and I tell her that we will after 2008. But setting this objective for a group of several hundred secondary schools in addition to those that already offer the three sciences is a big step in the right direction. I hope that that will create a solid group of schools from which we can build out thereafter.
	As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, so rightly said, everything in this area depends on having sufficient qualified teachers. That is a particular issue in physics and chemistry. Only 19 per cent of science teachers have a physics qualification, and only 25 per cent have a chemistry qualification. We have set a target that, by 2014,25 per cent of science teachers should have a physics specialism, and 31 per cent should have a chemistry specialism. To help bring that about, we are increasing the golden hellos in those subjects to attract more teachers, in addition to the training bursaries we currently pay. We are also increasing the number of career switcher posts available through the graduate teacher programme, particularly in those subjects; and substantially increasing the Teach First programme, which brings in new graduates who may only stay for two years in the profession, with a special training course particularly focused on science. So we have been improving provision.
	The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised two issues. There is a good deal to be said for the IGCSE. It is an effective programme of study, and we have asked the QCA to advise us on whether it should be registered to be generally taught in state schools. That advice will come by the end of the month, and we will then consider it extremely seriously. Similarly, we are strong supporters of the right of students to choose to study the international baccalaureate. More than 70 schools and colleges in England now teach it; an increasing number of sixth-form colleges, for example, ensure that it is on offer in institutions with large post-16 provision. More can be done to encourage that.
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, about the importance of work experience. Unfortunately, there is an issue about funding, and we owe him a reply on that subject. I will see that my honourable friend the Minister for Higher Education replies to him. I know his concerns in respect of Trident, the organisation with which he is associated; If I may, I will deal with them in correspondence.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: We come on to the other half of this debate about the work-based learning and, in particular, about the new specialist diplomas, which will cover the more vocational areas of the curriculum. Amendment No. 199A fits together with Amendment No. 204A in this group. I will speak to them first and then to Amendments Nos. 205B and C and 206A, which again fit together as a group and are a separate although related issue.
	Amendments Nos. 199A and 204A relate to the degree to which the new specialist diplomas will enable pupils to mix vocational and academic courses. As framed, under Clause 67 new Section 85A in the Education Act 2002 states very firmly that in addition to the core subjects of English, maths and science, plus the foundation subjects of ICT, physical education and citizenship, a pupil can opt either for various entitlement subjects in the four areas embraced by the arts, humanities, design and technology or a modern foreign language, or for a course of study in an entitlement area specified by the Secretary of State—in other words, one of the new vocational diploma areas that are being developed with the sector skills councils.
	Amendment No. 199A suggests that the two should not be exclusive; that, for example, a pupil choosing to take a diploma course in construction should also, timetable permitting, be able to study a modern foreign language or history or geography. Amendment No. 204A, which relates to the new subsection (3) at line 5 on page 51, which is still new Section 85A of the Education Act 2002, eliminates subsection (3) which, as I read it, currently prohibits a pupil studying in more than one of the new diploma areas and substitutes a new subsection which says that where courses of study are compatible, a pupil should be able to take discrete modules in different courses. For example, they should be able to do design and graphics side by side with a construction course, subject to that being timetable-compatible.
	We tabled the amendments because that we felt that by creating at age 14 the divide between those who can take GCSE subjects in those four areas and those who take the vocational diploma, we are creating a binary divide between the vocational and the academic. That will now come at 14 and will cut through schools. The spirit of Tomlinson was to do precisely the opposite. The introduction of the new specialist diplomas was to implement the Tomlinson report, as far as the Government were prepared to implement it. However, it does not implement the spirit of Tomlinson, which was that there should be a mixing and matching on the part of pupils between vocational and academic courses; that we should not shut doors on those options at that early stage; indeed, that we should keep those doors open right up to the age of 18.
	The great danger of these new vocational diplomas is that they are effectively putting this barrier downat an early stage. I mentioned that in my Second Reading speech, and the Minister was good enough to write me a letter about specialised diplomas.I thank him very much for that. In his letter, he writes:
	"It has always been our intention to allow young people flexibility at Key Stage 4 and to ensure that they are not trapped in a wholly vocational or academic route based on the choices they have made at age 14. Diplomas will contain a large element of generic learning: functional skills in English, maths and ICT, personal, employability, learning and thinking skills".
	We know that they must do English, maths and science, because they are core subjects that they must study. We know that they must study ICT, citizenship and PE because those are foundation subjects, but that may cut them out of doing a foreign language or history and geography alongside a vocational course.
	The Minister continues:
	"This generic content will ensure that the young people are able to switch between academic and what are seen as more vocational routes, as they progress".
	If there is second-rate, functional maths provided for those doing the diploma, they will not necessarily be able to switch. He goes on:
	"At level 2, diplomas will occupy little more than half the curriculum time at Key Stage 4".
	I understand that, but I am still worried about the divide. He says:
	"This is sufficiently large to allow a substantial, coherent programme of learning, whilst allowing time for additional learning outside the specialised diploma, including the National Curriculum core and foundation subjects".
	They must do the core and foundation subjects; they have no choice. It seems to me that they are bolted too strongly into those vocational subjects and that there is not enough flexibility, not enough room for mixing and matching. Given the time, I do not want to spend more time on this, but I hope that the Minister can give me greater hope that there will be more flexibility and I look forward to hearing from him.
	Amendments Nos. 205B and 205C and 206A pick up the Chancellor's promise in the Budget that the entitlement of free tuition would be shifted from age 19 through to 25. The amendment really picks that up and says, "If that is the case, then surely the Bill should say 25 and not 19 in these circumstances". It is a small amendment that is simply asking: when are we going to see implementation of the Chancellor's promise on the entitlement to free tuition throughage 25? I beg to move.

Lord Adonis: On the modular approach to some subjects, including languages, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned, we are sympathetic. We have introduced a languages ladder which precisely mirrors the approach taken with music exams. Students go up by grades when they are ready to take them. We are about to decide what the equivalents will be in terms of points for GCSE and beyond, and I believe that there is room to go further. My noble friend Lady Thornton and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, spoke with great conviction on post-16 participation and opportunity. We entirely endorse the points that they made about that. The question is the precise means by which to bring about the objectives that we all share.
	The core and specialised diploma entitlement for 16 to 19 year-olds supports greater curriculum choice for all young people, including not least the educationally disadvantaged, who, too often, have not been provided for in the past. Although the entitlements in Clause 68 relate specifically to 16 to 19 year-olds and legally cease if a person does not start one of these courses before he or she reaches the age of 19, there are a number of funded non-statutory entitlements in place which will ensure that those who have not reached at least level 2 qualifications by that age, for whatever reason, can access these later in life.
	All young people and adults now have a non-statutory entitlement to study free, without having any charges at all, towards their first level 2 qualification. Those aged between 19 and 25 will also have a non-statutory entitlement to study again free towards their first level 3 qualification. We brought about that change recently. In fact, it has led to some difficult decisions in the further education world. Some of my noble friends have raised the trade-off with adult learning. There is a trade-off, but we have done it because we want younger people between the age of 19 and 25 to have the entitlement to be able to study up to their first level 3 qualification. If they did not get it while they were at school, they would have the opportunity thereafter. In addition, the range of level 2 qualifications covers practical vocational qualifications relating to particular jobs or industries. For example, a level 2 qualification can be obtained in food hygiene or bricklaying. Those more vocational courses may be more appropriate for those already in employment and those seeking to be employed in a particular job.
	We recognise that financial constraints often prevent a young person or adult from completing a course as part of his or her further education. We have therefore developed packages of support for young people to help alleviate the financial burden of studying part-time. These include targeted support administered by colleges to help students experiencing the greatest amount of financial difficulty, particularly those without a level 2 qualification, and the new adult learning grants which provide up to £30 per week for the low-skilled employed on low incomes who wish to undertake full-time study towards a level 2 or level 3 qualification.
	Amendment No. 199A would allow pupils to study entitlement subjects as well as specialised diplomas. Our aim is to allow students to study courses that engage them and provide a breadth of study. Of course, we support the intention of the amendments, but there are practical issues. At level 1, a specialised diploma will be equivalent in teaching hours to four or five GCSEs. Level 2 will equate to five or six GCSEs. In addition to their specialised diplomas, students will be required to study the core subjects of English, maths and science, and the foundation subjects of ICT, PE and citizenship. Although some of those subjects will be covered as part of the specialised diploma, most will be studied as an additional course.
	For the majority of students, that will, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, recognised, equate to a very full and challenging timetable of study. We recognise that some students may wish to study additional subjects and schools will have the freedom to allow them do so where they believe that this is a viable option. But we believe that the decisions surrounding this are best left to the discretion of the school and are not mandated centrally. As the amendment acknowledges, timetabling all those different courses can be problematic for schools. We feel that additional entitlements would make that even more difficult to organise and might imperil the introduction of the diplomas.
	Amendment No. 204A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, would allow pupils to mix and match units of study from different diploma areas. We believe that we have a duty to all young people to ensure that the courses they choose to study lead to high quality qualifications that are valued by employers and universities. It will not therefore be possible for young people to mix discrete units of study from one diploma line with units of study from another diploma line. This approach would not guarantee the breadth and depth of learning needed to support progression both within and across sector lines. Neither would we expect the governing bodies of schools or FE institutions to have the time or expertise to determine the suitability of unit combinations from across diploma sectors. It would be unreasonable and economically unviable to expect schools and colleges offering a diploma to make every single optional unit available to young people. Schools and colleges will decide which units to offer, making sure that the available units and applied rules of combination make up a coherent learning programme. The learner will then be able to make their own choices from the options that are locally available, with guidance from teachers, mentors and advisers on which units will provide the right learning programme for them.
	I hope that the noble Baroness understands these practical issues, although I know that she would like us to be able to go further.

Lord Adonis: I should first like to speak to government Amendments Nos. 214 and 264. These bring Section 6 of the Transport Act 1985 into line with what I am told were its original intentions. Amendment No. 214 exempts certain bus services from the requirement to register with the Traffic Commissioner. The bus services exempted are those which provide free school transport under Sections 509 and 509AA of the EducationAct 1996 and Section 508 and Schedule 35C, which are introduced by this Bill.
	These services are closed services. That means they carry only fare-paying passengers who are pupils, persons escorting or supervising pupils, or persons involved in the provision of education at the premises served.
	Registration of bus services with the Traffic Commissioner is designed to protect the paying public from unscrupulous bus operators which might seek to change routes or withdraw services without giving any notice, leaving passengers stranded. Registered services are required to give 56 days' notice of changes, allowing regular passengers to make alternative arrangements. However, buses which cater solely for schools do not require such protection. On the contrary, greater flexibility would enable routes to be altered to pick up or set down a pupil with particular short-term transport needs.
	Without this amendment, each and every such route change would require the service to be re-registered with the Traffic Commissioner. Over time, the compliance costs and bureaucratic burden on local authorities of this requirement could prove to be considerable, hence the government amendments.
	We agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who said in moving her Amendments Nos. 209A, 210A and 210B, that there should be a joined-up approach between the education and transport departments. However, we have dealt with this in draft guidance, which has been made available to the Committee. This states that the school travel strategy should be,
	"a statement of the authority's overall vision",
	and that it should,
	"build on, and be developed in the context of the authority's community strategies, and Local Transport Plan (LTP)—including its accessibility plan and bus strategy".
	I hope that the noble Baroness will agree that this guidance addresses her points on joined-up thinking and working across departments.
	I turn to Amendments Nos. 211 and 213, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and the right reverend Prelate spoke. We are aware that transport to schools preferred on grounds of religion or belief is an issue of concern, both for those who are currently in receipt of it and those from lower-income backgrounds, for precisely the reasons which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, gave. We are continuing to consider raising the six-mile limit, but the sums of money involved are considerable, which is why we are wrestling with the matter. We would need to ensure that local authorities were properly provided for if they were expected to meet this obligation. I hope to be able to return on Report with our further thinking. I stress that the reason why I have not yet been able to do so is the costs. We will have to wrestle with them if we are to be able to make changes and, as ever, they will involve trade-offs.
	Amendment No. 211A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, would add an additional stage to the process of developing school travel schemes by requiring a report to be brought before Parliament which detailed the impact of the schemes. It would be impractical to produce such a report before the regulations had been laid, since only then would authorities be able to submit applications. However, we are committed to ensuring that all such schemes are subject to full and timely evaluation. I hope that that commitment reassures the noble Baroness.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I have three amendments in this group, Amendments Nos. 211B, 211C and 211D. They all relate to Clause 74, which deals with the provision of transport for certain adult learners, and specifically for adult learners with learning disabilities of one form or another.
	I was approached by Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities and the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association because disabled students aged between 19 and 25 have problems getting transport when taking part in education courses. The failure to provide transport for disabled students over 19 remaining in further, adult and continuing education and work-based learning—partly because of their disabilities they are frequently somewhat behind others in their education—has been a problem for many years.
	A local learning and skills council can agree to continue to fund a disabled student, but the local authority is under no obligation to provide transport. One member of Skill's council was given additional funding to finish his A-levels, aged 20, but his local county council refused to fund his transport and he had to rely on his retired father to take him to and fro. It was only when the Minister's office contacted the council that funding was found.
	Skill therefore welcomed the opportunity to be involved in a DfES working group, alongside the RNIB, looking into education transport for 16 to 19 year-olds. It also very much welcomes the guidance that has been issued on transport support arrangements for students aged 16 to 19, which states:
	"Good practice suggests that wherever possible LAs and their partners should provide support ... until at least the age of 21, and ideally up to 25".
	That marries up with the discussion that we have just had on level 2 and level 3 entitlements up to that age.
	However, the evidence suggests that despite the work of the DfES and the guidance, many disabled students over 19, some of whom are being funded by their local learning and skills council to finish their course after 19 because of their disability, are not being funded by their LEA for their transport costs. For example, the Black Country Connexions Partnership reports that three out of the four LEAs in its area will not fund the transport costs of disabled students beyond the age of 19.
	In addition, there is no requirement to provide cross-local authority boundary travel until 2008 and no requirement to provide travel in the morning peak or on other modes of transport. Guide Dogs for the Blind has heard of a number of cases where local authorities have removed free morning peak-time travel that they previously gave to disabled people in recent months. Local authorities should be encouraged to level up to give all disabled people free travel in the morning peak, as London does.
	However, as not all young people with disabilities and special educational needs are eligible for concessionary fares and a few disabled people will never be able to access mainstream public transport because of their impairments, those who have transport specified in their transition plans should also be entitled to free transport.
	For visually impaired young people, it is also essential that mobility and independence education, which would include training for independent travel, is included. Those are not routinely provided in the education system. Mobility training is provided by only 25 per cent of schools in England and 50 per cent of schools in Wales, and where it is provided it rarely continues through the school holidays and is seldom continued up to college level.
	The LSC national council has recently accepted a report prepared for it on the provision of post-16 education for disabled people, Through Inclusion to Excellence. The report recognised that transport was a major difficulty for disabled young people in post-16 learning. It recommended that:
	"DfES and other Government departments [should] consider and propose appropriate transport legislation for those learners over the age of 19, with learning difficulties and/or disabilities".
	The Bill provides such an opportunity to act on this recommendation.